Cross-border payments remain a consistent problem for many African businesses. Many people, especially those living in rural areas with poor digital infrastructure, find themselves weighed down by slow and costly banking systems, fragmented currency channels, and reliance on their surrounding community to get their projects off the ground.
Hammed Afenifere grew up inside that reality, observing its constraints firsthand in Nigeria’s informal currency markets long before entering the fintech world. His early work in finance made him see how people struggled to move money internationally, which led to a lifelong interest in payments and the systems behind them.
Now leading Spark Tech Hub and its flagship platform, Oneremit, he’s transforming that early understanding into a structured service built to move funds for African businesses within minutes.
Building An Entrepreneurial Spirit Early On
Long before Oneremit established itself as a reliable option for processed transactions, the patterns that defined Hammed’s approach to business were already forming. Growing up in Nigeria, he built his first quasi-business at the age of seven, washing bicycles for neighbors and collecting small earnings that, over time, turned into real savings.
That early drive stayed constant as he pursued new ways to connect people and solve problems. Years later, during his studies in Estonia, he noticed a different kind of friction: social isolation within a largely homogenous environment. His response was Kliks, a social media app to help people meet and interact with others who shared their interests, from football to music to food outings.
The concept earned him a place in a Canadian incubator and brought him across the Atlantic under the Startup Visa program. While the app didn’t take off, it gave him a more focused understanding of product-market fit and global consumer behavior — two main factors that he’d carry into Spark Tech Hub.
Discovering The Friction In Cross-Border Payments
Hammed’s time inside a bureau de change offered a close view of how cross-border payments actually moved through Nigeria’s informal and formal channels. Here, he was at the center of transactions that revealed the gap between what people needed and what existing systems could deliver.
In that position, he saw parents struggle to move tuition payments overseas, businesses wait weeks for bank approvals, and traders depend on currency brokers to access dollars. “When parents came to send school fees abroad, I saw how hard it was to move money — and that stuck with me,” he recalls.
He also noticed many long-established companies operated without easily verifiable digital footprints, like a presence on social media or readily available customer testimonials, creating immediate friction with foreign partners who expected verifiable online records.
However, these daily frictions pushed him toward an idea. He began thinking about how technology could greatly assist in currency movement and close the space between trust-based local commerce and the strict expectations of international regulators. That thinking eventually led him toward the foundation of Spark Tech Hub.
Spark Tech Hub: Making Payments Accessible For Africans With Oneremit
Spark Tech Hub took shape in 2021 as Hammed’s way to build a solution that African businesses could use to improve their transaction processes. Within it, he later developed Oneremit, a focused cross-border payments product designed to remove delays and intermediaries for companies sending funds abroad. Together, Spark Tech Hub and Onremit essentially act as a complement of one another: one providing the regulatory groundwork for other enterprises, the other delivering practical payment rails.
Oneremit aims to make financial settlement for African businesses easy by converting currency into a digital asset with a value equal to a regular currency (otherwise known as “stablecoins”), and transferring and depositing it into the recipient’s account. Through this system, the platform removes the need for fragmented liquidity sources and gives companies a dependable way to pay suppliers abroad in the destination’s local currency. “With stablecoins,” Hammed explains, “individuals and businesses in Africa can send payments anywhere in the world.”
Launched early in 2025, Oneremit’s earliest traction came from a small community investing group whose members already trusted Hammed’s team with shared financial activity. That network became the foundation for Oneremit’s first users, expanding entirely through referrals. As the product matured, the team added operational support and grew its internal capacity to serve several international commercial clients.
The company’s credibility deepened as larger institutions turned to Oneremit for mission-critical payment flows, including companies like Wakanow, one of the largest players in West Africa’s travel sector. Through these relationships, Spark Tech Hub is establishing a reputation for bridging regulatory demands with the community-based business culture that fuels internal African markets.
A Future Built On Stablecoins
As Oneremit solidifies its underlying payments engine, the next phase centers on a multi-currency wallet designed to give African users direct access to foreign-currency accounts without the usual barriers. Set for release in 2026, the wallet would allow holders to keep USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR within a single interface, converting directly from local currency.
This way, a merchant in a remote Nigerian town could, for example, move naira into CAD without first sourcing USD, getting rid of many of the hurdles that come with cross-border transactions in the region.
Meeting this goal, Hammed realizes, means establishing more than technical upgrades. Hammed has sought to introduce customers to practices that match Western regulatory expectations. That often means guiding long-standing enterprises to build websites, open Instagram accounts, and establish a traceable digital presence — small steps that can determine whether foreign financial partners approve or decline a transaction.
Across all of this, Spark Tech Hub continues to deal with the behind-the-scenes operations: routing conversions, securing partners, and handling liquidity so users never encounter the machinery beneath — all challenges Hammed is personally looking forward to fixing. “I like solving problems, and one of Africa’s big problems right now is payments,” he says. “The thought of being at the forefront of solving that, using stablecoin technology, is what inspires me.”
By combining direct currency conversion with stronger compliance pathways, Hammed Afenifere is building a company that, if it continues to grow, could give African entrepreneurs the kind of financial reach once limited to major city centers and large corporations.
Spencer Hulse is the Editorial Director at Grit Daily. He is responsible for overseeing other editors and writers, day-to-day operations, and covering breaking news.
