Timmy spent four years moving money on WhatsApp. Now he's building the one financial app Africans actually need.
Meet Oluwasanmi Timilehin, "Timmy", the founder of Evolution app. The story starts with a crypto OTC desk, a CBN policy change, and one important realization about what his customers actually needed.
Let me paint you a picture you probably know very well.
You’re a Nigerian freelancer. A content creator. A remote worker getting paid in dollars. You get your payment, USDT, maybe, or a wire transfer, and then the juggling act begins. You open one app to convert the stablecoin. You open another to receive the dollar transfer. You open a third to move it to naira.
By the time you’re done, you’ve paid fees on three platforms, waited on two confirmation screens, and lost thirty minutes of your Monday morning.
Timmy saw this problem not from a pitch deck, but from four years of living inside it, as the person people called when they needed to move money.
Before the app, there was the hustle
In 2021, before the CBN lifted its restrictions on crypto, Oluwasanmi Timilehin was running an OTC desk from WhatsApp. No app. No platform. Just a deep knowledge of how money moved, USDT, USDC, across borders, and a reputation built transaction by transaction. In four years, he processed over $5 million that way.
He knew exactly what his customers needed. He just needed the right moment to build it formally.
“Due to the regulations in Nigeria, I was not certain about putting an MVP out. But when the CBN relaxed the laws on cryptocurrencies, it was time to build.”
— Oluwasanmi Timilehin (Timmy), Founder, Evolution
That moment came in December 2023 when the CBN updated its digital asset regulations. By December 2024, Timmy had built an MVP. By January 2025, Cryptonia, a stablecoin on-ramp and off-ramp platform, was live. It let users convert USDT and USDC to naira and back. Clean. Simple. Solving one problem well.
But then his customers showed him something he hadn’t fully planned for.
The moment that changed everything
Cryptonia was built for crypto-native users. But as the platform grew, Timmy kept seeing the same pattern: his customers were not just moving stablecoins. They were receiving USD and euro payments the traditional way, wire transfers, freelance platforms, business invoices. Fiat money. Old-school finance.
And they had nowhere that bridged both worlds cleanly.
The gap wasn't just stablecoins. It was everything, and nobody had built the one place to handle all of it.
So Cryptonia evolved. Not as a rebrand, as a genuine product transformation. Today it is Evolution: a global payments platform that lives at the intersection of decentralized finance and traditional banking, designed specifically for Nigerians and Africans operating in a global economy.
What Evolution actually does
Here’s where I want to be very clear, because when I first heard about Evolution I assumed crypto platform. It is not. Or rather, it is not just that. Let Timmy explain it in his own words:
“We are a full global payment platform that provides remote workers, global businesses, entrepreneurs, and content creators the financial tools and infrastructure to go global, to receive global payments from Nigeria and emerging markets.”
— Timmy
In practical terms, here is what you get on Evolution:
The key word Timmy kept coming back to is unification. Every currency, every payment type, one account. One place to receive, convert, hold, and spend, whether you're getting paid from a London agency, a US startup, or a DeFi protocol.
“People are always juggling multiple platforms. Evolution combines all of that into one. It sort of unifies everything and removes the fragmentation.” Timmy said.
What’s coming next
Evolution is currently live in Nigeria, but not for long, as the only country on the map. Timmy told me that expansion to other African countries is happening this month, with support rolling out across: Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, The Gambia, and Francophone Africa.
Currency support is also expanding beyond naira to include Ghanaian cedis, Kenyan shillings, and South African rand, with more to follow. And the newly launched virtual card, with Apple Pay and Google Pay integration, means Evolution users can now spend their global earnings anywhere in the world without a physical card or a prayer that it won’t decline.
If you are a freelancer, a remote worker, a content creator, a small business owner receiving payments from abroad, Evolution was built specifically for you. Not for institutions. Not for import/export companies with finance teams. For the person sitting in Lagos, Nairobi, or Accra who is doing real global work and deserves global financial infrastructure to match.
Timmy did not start with funding or a co-working space. He started with a WhatsApp group and four years of learning exactly how money moves for people like his customers. That is the kind of founder in60 wants the world to know about.
Try Evolution → Download the app and explore the platform.
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🤝 Collab Corner
When did you last sit in a room where founders were actually honest about building in Nigeria? Not the highlight reel, the hiring nightmares, the 3am doubt, the real stuff.
That’s the room UnwindFest by YellowLyfe has been building for 6 years. Their flagship event, Founders Rant X, is back for its 10th edition.
Voices in the room: Paul Onwuanibe (Landmark Africa) on the keynote, Katharina Link (Pulse Africa), Kehinde Ogundare, Damilola Teida, Fola Olatunji-David, and Kelechi Nwaozuzu.
📅 May 13, 2026 · 📍 Alliance Française, Lagos · 👥 150+ founders & leaders