YC alum and ex-FairMoney exec returns with travel-focused fintech, Timon

In April 2011, Oluwatomi Ayorinde—now CEO of Timon, a travel-finance startup—found himself stranded in Mannheim, Germany, after a store declined his GTBank debit card. With no cash and little German, his options looked thin.

“I swiped my card. Sometimes it worked, and other times it didn’t. I couldn’t tell why it wasn’t working, and it was very expensive to call customer service,” Ayorinde told Condia. “So I spent almost a whole day in that city looking for help.”

What he needed was simple: a reliable way to pay for basics—like a ride back to his hotel. He eventually reached the driver who’d dropped him at the airport, got a lift, and a colleague fronted him cash.

The episode stuck with him, not just as a reminder to carry cash, but as a window into how many African travellers still grapple with unreliable cards, limited support, and awkward workarounds abroad.

“How do we solve travel for Africans?” he began to ask. “How do we ensure that travellers can move without worry or anxiety, and trust that their card will work everywhere?”

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These questions would later set him on the path to building Timon with cofounder Chizaram Ucheaga.

Ayorinde: The serial innovator behind Timon

Ayorinde has spent more than a decade shaping financial technology in Africa. His media profile spiked recently when FairMoney acquired PayForce, the flagship product of his YC-backed startup, CrowdForce.

CrowdForce’s mission was ambitious: to turn every local merchant into a bank branch, an idea shaped by his background as both a software engineer and a financial services consultant.

That journey began at Covenant University, where he graduated in 2008. Soon after, he joined AppZone, a homegrown software company building apps for enterprises.

As a young engineer, he helped develop Bank One, a cloud-based core banking system that went on to power nearly every microfinance bank in Nigeria. At a time when most lenders relied on imported solutions and foreign consultants, Bank One stood out as a rare, locally-built alternative.

By 2011, Ayorinde was on the other side of the table. He joined SAP, the German enterprise software giant with operations in more than 180 countries. For six years, he worked on large-scale transformation projects across multiple markets. His role as an integration and business development consultant demanded extensive travel and gave him firsthand exposure to how financial systems operated globally. It was on one of those trips that he encountered the payment frustration which would later inspire Timon.

Those lessons, combined with his engineering roots, set the stage for his leap into entrepreneurship. With CrowdForce, he sought to bridge the gap between financial services and everyday Africans, eventually drawing the attention of FairMoney. And now, with Timon, he is returning to an even more personal pain point—the one that first struck him in Mannheim.

Timon: The card for inbound and outbound travellers

“Most Africans carry cash,” Ayorinde explains. “The regular cards fail. And no one wants to be that person swiping endlessly at a restaurant abroad while the waiter stares.”

“We discovered the issue was with our banking infrastructure not meeting the demands of the modern traveller,” he said. 

Timon was built to change that. The startup offers a dollar card designed to work anywhere in the world, regardless of the local currency. “As long as the payment card network is up, the Timon card will work,” Ayorinde says. “So you never have to worry about being stranded.”

Getting started is simple. After completing KYC on the app, users can receive the card within 24 to 48 hours or pick one up at the airport and activate it instantly. Funding is instant, too, whether through bank transfer or stablecoins, with currency conversions done at the BDC (Bureau De Change) rate.

By tackling both sides of the travel equation—Africans going abroad and visitors coming in—Timon positions itself as more than just another dollar card. Tourists, remote workers, and business travellers often find their international cards don’t work in Nigeria, where mobile transfer dominates. “They end up relying on whoever invited them,” Ayorinde notes. “Timon lets them spend just like a local would.” For instance, foreigners can get a naira-denominated card from Timon to spend locally.

How does Timon differ from travel sites and other virtual dollar card platforms?

While other travel-focused platforms like Wakanow or TravelBeta help users book flights and tickets, Timon is doing something different. It’s not a booking company; rather, it’s a payment platform designed to improve the travel experience.

On the other hand, compared to virtual dollar card providers like Geepay or Chipper Cash, Timon sets itself apart by focusing on making payments easy for tourists, business travellers, nomads and remote families.

“What you see with the new wave of startups is that the focus is on the gig economy and remittances. They ask, ‘How do we help gig workers receive money in dollars?’,” he says. “When you look at what we focus on, we ask how we help Africans spend money when they travel abroad?”

“Because our customer segment is different, our product direction and go-to-market strategy are also different. For example, we give you: a reliable travel card, and the ability to buy the card at airports. Also, if your card were to get lost, we have card stocks in different hubs across the world and can ship one to you as soon as possible. In the future, we want our users to be able to book their museum visits from the app, and buy discounted flight and ticket inventories.”

Timon’s pitch is resonating. Since launching its MVP in September 2024, it has attracted 20,000 users, most through word of mouth and social media referrals.

Building Africa’s financial passport while dealing with inhibitors like fraud

Timon aims to become the second passport every African traveller carries. 

To do this, it has to contend with the elephant in the room, the high rate of fraud (especially chargeback, which is card-specific), which has crippled other similar businesses in Africa.

“Fraud is a real problem [in this payments business]. It’s one of the reasons we didn’t do a public launch immediately, because we wanted to take the time to learn from our early adopters,” Ayorinde said. “We have taken a lot of the fraud rules and insights from my last business and coupled that with the learning from this to reduce the likelihood of fraud losses. For instance, we do not allow third-party funding, which blocks some legitimate use cases, but so far, in the last year, we haven’t had any (fraud-related loss) issue.”

Also, Timon has to deal with the local scepticism around newly-launched fintech platforms, especially as cases of disappearing funds and fintech failures abound. 

“We know Nigerians are sceptical. Hence, we can’t continue to rely on word of mouth to take us further. We are now intentionally putting in some measures to cultivate trust amongst our target base.”

In line with its travel-focused roadmap, Timon plans to introduce local payment options in countries where cards are not the preferred mode of payment, i.e. mobile money, bank transfer, QR code payments.. “Wherever you go, we want Timon to be your trusted financial partner,” Ayorinde tells Condia.

Turns out that day in Mannheim, Germany, became the foundation for a fintech product that could transform how Africans spend globally. Timon is already backed by Kaleo Ventures, Microtraction, Openseed and Algrowithm Angels.