CapitalSage Completes Acquisition of Chimoney, Relaunches App as Tiki

CapitalSage Vantage Limited, a subsidiary of CapitalSage Holdings, has completed its all-cash acquisition of Nigerian-founded payments startup Chimoney, returning the company’s business payment infrastructure to operation.

The acquisition brings Chimoney under CapitalSage after the company notified customers on May 1 that it had stopped processing new transactions and integrations because of insufficient capital. Chimoney suspended transactions, began refunding customer balances and faced the possibility of a permanent shutdown.

Under its new ownership, Chimoney has resumed accepting clients and processing transactions. Its business-to-business infrastructure continues to offer APIs for cross-border collections, payouts and multi-currency wallets.

Consumer app relaunched as Tiki

Chimoney’s consumer-facing application has been relaunched as Tiki, a remittance service aimed at customers in Canada and the United Kingdom. The service is designed to connect those customers with recipients in African markets, including Nigeria and The Gambia.

CapitalSage lists Tiki under its CapitalSage Vantage subsidiary, while Chimoney continues to serve businesses through its payments infrastructure. The platform previously enabled businesses to make payments across 41 currencies.

Acquisition followed shutdown announcement

CapitalSage signed an agreement to acquire Chimoney four weeks after the startup announced its suspension in May. The transaction was structured in phases to accommodate Canadian regulatory requirements concerning ownership changes involving payment service providers.

The value of the deal was not disclosed. Uchi Uchebeke, who was involved in building Chimoney, said CapitalSage Vantage had acquired Chi Technologies Inc., the company behind the startup.

“Every investor has been repaid in full, and the team has received its transaction proceeds,” Uchebeke said in a statement, thanking Abiola Bawuah, group chief executive officer of CapitalSage Holdings, and John Alamu, the group’s founder and managing director, for completing the acquisition and taking the business forward.

Uchebeke said 31 individuals and firms received payments from the transaction. Those details were attributed to him and were not independently verified in the supplied report.

Chimoney’s business and transition

Founded in 2022, Chimoney is a Techstars-backed payments startup that acquired social payments company Scrim in 2023. Before its shutdown, it had secured registration as a payment service provider with the Bank of Canada and as a money services business with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC.

Uchebeke previously identified customer acquisition and liquidity as major challenges for the business. Chimoney needed to maintain funds across multiple regions and currencies while operating its payment network, and he estimated that the company would have required about $3 million in additional capital to meet its growth ambitions.

He described the company’s infrastructure as providing the functions needed on both sides of a payment, including collecting funds, managing balances and paying recipients. Its APIs allow developers to integrate those functions into other products, while businesses can also use the platform directly.

Uchebeke remained involved in a six-month transition following the acquisition. He is now building APort, a separate startup focused on authorisation infrastructure for artificial intelligence agents, while Chimoney continues under CapitalSage’s ownership.