Good morning. A lot happened this week and some of it got badly misread online. Let’s set the record straight and then catch up on everything else.
Moniepoint shut down MonieWorld. No, it was not a POS machine abroad.
The moment the news broke, the takes started flying. Moniepoint tried to replicate its agent banking model in the UK and failed. Moniepoint wanted to put blue POS terminals on London streets. Neither of those things is true, and both do a disservice to what actually happened.
MonieWorld launched in April 2025 as a remittance product, a mobile app that allowed Nigerians and Africans in the UK to send money directly to Nigerian bank accounts using a MonieWorld account, British bank cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
It was a clean, digital, consumer-facing remittance play. No agents. No POS machines. No cash. Just transfers from the UK to Nigeria through your phone.
The service recorded some early growth, monthly transaction volumes among UK customers rose 70%. The numbers were moving.
But Moniepoint made a call that more and more African fintechs are starting to make: the resources keeping this product alive in a highly competitive UK remittance corridor, where Wise, Lemfi, NALA, and others are well established, could generate stronger returns if redirected to Africa.
Moniepoint stopped transactions on and fully shut down MonieWorld. Most employees on the MonieWorld team will be moved into other roles within Moniepoint.
This is not a story about failure. It is a story about prioritisation. Moniepoint currently serves more than 20 million businesses and individuals monthly and processes more than $250 billion in annual digital payments through its subsidiaries.
The core business is enormous and still growing. MonieWorld was an experiment that did not earn the right to consume more of that attention at this stage.
The lesson here is simple: even when a product is growing, that does not automatically mean it deserves more capital than the core business. Moniepoint chose the core. That is a rational decision, not a retreat.
Ventures Platform just raised $83 million. In this market, that is remarkable.
Ventures Platform has announced the final close of its second institutional fund, VP Pan-African Fund II, at $83 million, exceeding its initial $75 million target.
To understand why this matters, you need the context. African startups have raised roughly $930 million across more than 200 deals so far this year, down from $1.16 billion across 447 deals over the same period last year.
The funding environment is genuinely difficult. LPs, the institutions and investors who put money into VC funds, are asking harder questions than they were in 2021 and 2022. Proof of returns, not just promise of growth.
The fund brings in four new institutional backers: the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Norfund, the Dutch family office Alphatron, and the Ashesi University Foundation, alongside a consortium of new family offices. 70% of Fund I’s LPs returned to back Fund II.
When most of your existing investors come back, it is the clearest possible signal that the first fund delivered something worth repeating.
The firm is expanding beyond Nigeria and has already written checks from Fund II to five companies based in Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, with check sizes up to $3 million.
Ventures Platform’s portfolio already includes Moniepoint, PiggyVest, OmniRetail, and Raenest. Fund II is how they find the next set of those names, before anyone else does.
🤝 Collab Corner — Founders Rant X 2.0 is this Thursday
Most business events are built around performance. Polished panels. Carefully worded answers. Nobody talks about the month they almost shut down.
Founders Rant X 2.0 is the exception. Happening this Thursday, August 28 at Alliance Française, Ikoyi, Lagos from 9am, with Chude Jideonwo, Biodun Stephen, Bayo “Lion” Adedeji, Dr. Joachim Adenusi, Tochukwu MacFoy, Dare Aliu, Ashley Immanuel, and Dr. Chinonso Egemba in the room. Eight voices. Zero filter.
🎟️ Get your tickets → unwindfest.com