Meet the ex-comedy star who built a fintech to tackle Australia’s $2B remittance problem

Seven bank closure letters arrived on the same day. Personal accounts, business accounts, joint accounts, everything Chibuike “Chizzy” Uzoukwu had built during his transition from viral comedy star to million-dollar entrepreneur, gone in a single coordinated strike.

“They even told me which other banks I couldn’t work with because of affiliations,” Uzoukwu recalls. “I went from managing creators making six figures monthly to being completely locked out of the financial system.”

Just months earlier, Uzoukwu was riding high as the monetisation mastermind behind Xploit Comedy, a Nigerian group whose church drama origins evolved into social media dominance with hundreds of thousands of followers. Their breakthrough “scanning bucket skit” had gone international, reposts from celebrities catapulted their reach, and Uzoukwu’s systematic approach to maximising YouTube and Facebook payouts and managing creator earnings was generating serious money.

But success for the Nigerian who had moved to Australia came with an unexpected price: systematic exclusion from the very financial infrastructure that makes business possible, a reality that immigrant entrepreneurs across Australia know all too well.

What started as helping fellow creators navigate platform restrictions evolved into a million-dollar content monetisation business. Uzoukwu was managing over 1,800 creators across Nigeria and Ghana in 2019, facilitating payments that kept Africa’s booming digital creator economy running. But the bigger his legitimate digital content monetisation and payments facilitation business grew, the more suspicious it looked to Australia’s financial institutions.

× Sponsored

The debanking crisis

Australia hosts over 400,000 African-born residents who send approximately $2 billion annually to Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet despite this massive remittance market, existing solutions like WorldRemit and Remitly have consistently underserved immigrant communities with poor exchange rates, unreliable service, and algorithmic bias that treats legitimate high-volume users as inherent risks.

Uzoukwu discovered this the hard way. After relocating to Australia in 2023, his content monetisation business flourished—some creators in his network were earning $100,000 to $150,000 monthly. But as his payouts scaled, so did the scrutiny.

“Every month, I was sending large volumes back home because the majority of my clients are Nigerians,” he explains. “I had creators who are bloody millionaires. Then WorldRemit suspended my account, saying they don’t support business transactions. That same month, I couldn’t pay my creators. People thought I had eaten their money.”

The situation escalated when traditional banks began systematically closing his accounts. On February 8 2024, Uzoukwu received seven letters from his bank, each one shutting down a different account.

“That’s when I realised this isn’t just my problem,” he says. “I started hearing similar stories from other immigrants—people being debanked for reasons they didn’t understand.

The immigrant remittance gap

Uzoukwu’s experience reflects a broader structural challenge facing Australia’s immigrant communities. While researching alternatives, he discovered the problem extended far beyond his content monetisation business.

“I went to church, started asking community people, and discovered lots of people were having issues sending money back home,” he says. “Some were doing P2P transactions, giving their dollars to people with naira in Nigeria.”

This mirrors challenges facing specialised fintechs globally. Companies like LemFi, Nala, and Afriex have emerged specifically to serve African diaspora communities with transparency, lower fees, and compliance-savvy approaches that traditional remittance providers lack. LemFi, for instance, recently secured $33 million in funding to expand from serving African migrants to Asian diaspora communities, recognising that immigrant financial exclusion transcends geography.

The pattern is consistent: high-volume cross-border users—despite legitimate flows—are often classified as “high-risk” and excluded. This regulatory optics-driven approach forces individuals into informal P2P networks that are less safe and transparent.

Building Sharperly

Initially considering partnerships with existing platforms, Uzoukwu ultimately decided to build his own solution when negotiations stalled.

“I woke up one day and told myself, ‘How about I create my own remittance app?'” he recalls. “That was how Sharperly was birthed.”

The development journey proved challenging. Licensing requirements were more complex than anticipated, and Uzoukwu nearly abandoned the project until another entrepreneur contacted him about being debanked.

“When somebody else called me saying he’d been debanked, I realised this problem is bigger than just me,” he says.

Sharperly launched officially last month with a decent early traction: over 40 active users and more than $50,000 in transactions processed despite minimal marketing. Unlike Uzoukwu’s previous workarounds for creator monetisation, Sharperly operates within proper regulatory frameworks, holding an International Money Transfer (IMT) license in Australia, an IMTO license in Nigeria, and a Money Services Business (MSB) license in Canada for expansion.

“My first user completed signup and transaction in less than five minutes,” Uzoukwu says. “His feedback was ‘Awesome.’ He’s been referring people ever since because the experience was impressive compared to multiple platforms he’d used before.”

Immigrant banking beyond the African diaspora

While initially focused on serving African immigrants, Uzoukwu’s vision has expanded based on market research and user feedback.

“At first, the idea was to serve Africans, but I started meeting arabs, whites who are immigrants here, and discovered they too have difficulty sending money back home,” he explains. “This is an issue immigrants face, not just peculiar to Africans. We’re building a banking platform for immigrants, with remittance as the stepping stone.”

Kenya is the next market in line for expansion, with the licensing process already underway.  The approach reflects lessons learned from both his comedy career and content monetisation business: give audiences exactly what they need, when they need it.

Growth and market positioning

Sharperly currently operates with 15 employees, entirely bootstrapped without external investment. Despite pressure from angel investors in the US and Nigeria, Uzoukwu prefers maintaining control while building sustainable growth—a philosophy shaped by his entrepreneurial journey.

“From the day I graduated, I told myself I’m not going to work for anyone, and I never have,” he says. “Even though there’s been pressure from family and friends saying ‘You can’t survive in Australia without working,’ I’m here proving otherwise.”

This positioning is particularly strategic given the competitive landscape. While companies like LemFi are raising significant funding to expand globally, Sharperly’s focused approach to the underserved Australian immigrant market could provide a sustainable foundation for growth.

The broader fintech trend shows promise: specialised platforms serving immigrant communities are gaining traction by addressing specific pain points that generalist providers ignore. LemFi’s expansion into credit services for UK immigrants, and similar moves by Nala and Afriex, validate the market demand for immigrant-focused financial services.

The creator economy connection

Uzoukwu’s background in content monetisation offers rare insight into the challenges creators face, particularly for African creators navigating platform restrictions and payment challenges. After Facebook abruptly pulled its monetisation program from Nigeria in 2019, Uzoukwu found workarounds that turned into a million-dollar business managing creator payouts. Now, history is repeating itself as TikTok imposes similar restrictions, denying Nigerian creators access to monetisation tools despite their viral reach.

His experience with social media monetisation, combined with understanding creator payment flows, positions Sharperly to potentially expand into creator-focused financial services.

“These content creators are millionaires,” he emphasises. “The problem isn’t lack of money, it’s access to reliable financial infrastructure that understands their business models.”

Sharperly is currently processing transactions in Australia with plans to expand to Canada and Kenya. The platform focuses on serving immigrant communities with transparent fees and reliable service.