CreditChek, an African credit assessment provider, has acquired CreditCliq, a U.S.-based underwriting firm, in a deal with undisclosed financial terms.
The acquisition aims to enhance the creditworthiness of African immigrants worldwide by bridging credit information gaps across borders.
“We are thrilled to announce the acquisition of CreditCliq, a strategic move that strengthens our mission to unlock financial access for Africans around the world,” CreditChek announced Wednesday.
“Financial institutions should be able to provide credit to Africans globally,” Kingsley Ibe, CreditChek CEO, told Condia. “We are simply providing the data to support credit applications for African applicants who may have migrated to another country.”
Addressing credit challenges for immigrants
This acquisition addresses a major challenge faced by immigrants: the inability to transfer credit histories across countries. CreditChek focuses on how African immigrants’ lack of recognised credit records makes it difficult to obtain credit in their new countries.
By acquiring CreditCliq, CreditChek expects to accelerate its expansion into foreign markets such as the U.S., UK, and Canada.
With this extension, African immigrants can rent homes, get credit cards, and get loans more easily without having to build credit from the start.
Partnerships and product offerings
CreditChek’s platform collaborates with African credit bureaus to improve the transparency of financial data.
Among its main products are Income Insights, a tool that helps financial institutions determine a borrower’s creditworthiness based on bank statements, and Credit Insights, which links to African credit bureaus.
These tools charge 50 cents to $2 for each search or API call, and they drastically reduce credit assessment times from the usual 20 minutes to less than 90 seconds.
CreditCliq built the infrastructure to underwrite Mexican and Philippine immigrants for US lenders prior to the acquisition.
Eniola Osabiya, Eve Idusuyi, and Angel Idusuyi founded CreditChek in 2022.
“CreditCliq was born from our personal journey as global citizens, driven by the need to make cross-border financial access simpler and more inclusive. Today, we’re proud to pass the baton to CreditChek, a team that shares our values and brings the strength, vision, and commitment to take this mission even further,” Says Angel, CEO of CreditCliq
Standardised credit scoring system to handle compliance
Following the acquisition, its integration gives CreditChek access to a standardised credit scoring system that can handle compliance concerns and ease market entry by converting international credit histories into North American formats.
CreditCliq’s engineering staff will be kept on board to guarantee worldwide scalability.
“We are incredibly excited about this acquisition as it marks a strategic step forward in strengthening our infrastructure, accelerating credit decisioning across borders, and expanding access to reliable credit data for global financial institutions. We believe this move will bring us closer to our mission of making financial inclusion a reality for millions of African consumers globally,” said Lionel Orishane, CTO of CreditChek.
About CreditChek
Launched in 2022, CreditChek has already helped approve over $30 million worth of loans and completed over 300,000 verifications.
After raising $240,000 in 2021, the company is now raising a pre-seed extension round. These grants will help efforts to extend access to credit data in at least ten more African nations, such as South Africa, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
Baobab Network, a CreditChek investor, projects that 147 million Africans will leave the country by 2050, which is consistent with this calculated growth.
After increasing its sales by 600 percent in the last 18 months, CreditChek hopes to turn a profit by the fourth quarter of 2025.
The business and CredPal recently agreed to a five-year exclusive data coverage agreement.