Nigerian remittance startup LemFi acquires UK card issuer pillar to launch credit cards for immigrants

LemFi, a UK-headquartered remittance startup founded by Ridwan Olalere and Rian Cochran, has announced its acquisition of Pillar, a London-based credit card issuer focused on migrant communities. 

LemFi’s acquisition of Pillar marks a strategic leap forward, bringing together remittances, cross-border credit, and regulatory legitimacy into a unified platform. Meanwhile, its close competitor Nala is also evolving beyond remittances, building proprietary payment rails, launching a B2B platform called Rafiki, and expanding into global markets, including Asia and Latin America.

This strategic move aligns with LemFi’s ambition to become a full-stack financial platform for migrants in the UK, Canada, and Europe, leveraging Pillar’s existing licensed infrastructure. The deal closed in May 2025 and paves the way for the rollout of credit card products directly within the LemFi app.

LemFi— which serves around 2 million users and claims to have processed over $1 billion in monthly transactions as of January 2025— will leverage Pillar’s UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) license. By doing so, LemFi can bypass the lengthy regulatory approval process and offer credit cards and credit services directly through its remittance app. 

Since launching four years ago, Pillar has raised $16.9 million in 2022 and has issued about 20,000 cards to migrants from India and Nigeria. Its founders, formerly of Revolut and Barclays, have integrated into the LemFi leadership team.

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Solving migrants’ credit challenges

Migrants often arrive in new countries without a local credit history, hindering access to basic financial tools. LemFi, which secured $53 million in a Series B round led by Highland Europe to support its European expansion,  aims to bridge this by using Pillar’s open banking-powered credit decision engine, which analyses financial behaviour across 18 developing countries. This approach is catching on: in 2023, HSBC began using overseas credit data to assess new migrant applicants.

Read also: BREAKING: LemFi expands to Europe. The journey so far.

LemFi isn’t new to partnerships and licensing. In December 2023, it partnered with ClearBank to enable virtual accounts and e-wallets, processing around 550,000 transactions monthly. 

In private beta, LemFi has trialled “LemFi Credit” with over 8,000 users, seeing steady weekly growth. The company plans to roll out physical Visa credit cards later in 2025, allowing migrants to build credit using their financial history from their home countries. This positions LemFi ahead of traditional banks, which typically require UK-based credit records.

Global remittances hit $685 billion in 2024, per World Bank data, highlighting the sector’s scale. Startups like LemFi are challenging legacy players such as Western Union by offering tailored and cost-effective services to diaspora communities. The LemFi Pillar acquisition exemplifies a rising trend in African fintech: acquiring licensed international infrastructure to scale globally, seen in companies like Flutterwave and Kora.