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Anchor joins Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 Batch, Announces the Launch of Public Beta

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Anchor, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform making it possible to seamlessly build financial products in Africa announces its public beta launch. The startup was also accepted into Y Combinator Summer 2022 Batch as the first African BaaS and embedded finance platform.

In recent years, there have been several reports about the size of the Africa financial inclusion opportunity, particularly in reference to the provision of digital financial services.

These reports have brought about a spike in the number of companies and amount of investment activities in the fintech space in Africa. Yet, two things stand out; the minimal impact on financial inclusion, and the persisting difficulty in building and launching a fintech company on the continent.

For context, financial exclusion in Nigeria decreased by only one percent, from 37% in 2018 to 36% in 2020. Also, today, across Africa it takes an average of $500,000 and 18 months to build and go-to market with financial products. This is because companies need to go through the hurdles of rigorous licensing and compliance processes, multiple integration layers, complex banking and third-party relationships, and invest in complicated core-banking infrastructure.

Anchor is launching its public beta API infrastructure to make it easier for African businesses to build, embed and launch financial products, starting in its first market, Nigeria.

Founded by Segun Adeyemi, ex-CEO of Amplifypay, Olamide Sobowale and Gbekeloluwa Olufotebi, Anchor provides API for offering accounts, money movement, savings and card products.

“We built Anchor to abstract away the complexities in building financial products, so businesses can get started in five minutes with a few lines of code”, says Anchor’s CEO, Segun Adeyemi.

In May, Anchor released its private beta working with innovative start-ups like Outpost Health, Dillali, and Pivo. The BaaS platform has transacted millions, growing over 200% MoM, and is now set to launch its public beta for African businesses to embed finance into their offerings and for fintechs to build banking products. Already, the company has more than 40 other startups on its waitlist.

Anchor has raised over $1 million in pre-seed funding from Byld Ventures, Y Combinator, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and a host of angel investors including Emmanuel Okeleji (CEO, SeamlessHR), Ado Oseragbaje, Yinka Odeleye, and Sanmi Famuyide.

According to Ashutosh Desai, a Partner at Y Combinator, “Anchor’s embedded finance platform enables technology companies in Africa to build products that can rapidly expand access and improve quality of financial services. We’re excited to back Segun, Olamide, and Gbeke – a highly technical and experienced team – in building financial infrastructure that’s essential for Africa’s economic growth.”

“I believe BaaS will play a prominent role in the distribution of financial services in Africa. As a full stack baas provider, Anchor demarcates customer engagement from infrastructure – enabling its customers to focus on building differentiation as opposed to commodity infrastructure. We are really excited to be working with this determined and experienced team”, Founder of Byld Ventures, Youcef Oudjidane.

Anchor is a solution birthed by the insights garnered from the founders’ experience building and working with fintechs across Africa. The CEO, Segun Adeyemi founded Amplifypay; a payments company which he exited to Carbon (FKA OneFi/Paylater) in 2019. Segun proceeded to work with JUMO—a company that offers credit infrastructure to large mobile money operators across Africa.

Olamide, the CTO and co-founder, has worked at AppZone, TeamApt, Kuda, & Carbon. While at TeamApt he functioned as a Fullstack Engineer in the team that built the first virtual payments product in Nigeria. Gbeke, the Engineering Lead and co-founder, has been an IT Consultant and entrepreneur in Nigeria for over 10 years before joining Booking.com where he built financial operations software.

“We have seen first-hand the painful process of closing banking partnerships, negotiating third-party contracts, and obtaining regulatory approvals. And more generally, the extensive time and effort required to launch financial products,” Segun said.

He added that “considering the similarity in the underlying infrastructure, irrespective of the unique value propositions, companies should not have to wait for years and spend millions to go-to-market. That’s why we are excited to get Anchor into the hands of many more businesses via our public beta launch.”


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Ugo Onwuaso is an ICT enthusiast. He believes technology should be used for general good. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the Lagos state University. Dear Reader, Your support matters. But we believe that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. That is why, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and finance and how they affect lives. Our incisive and analytical view of how technology news affects the daily life help individuals and organizations make up their minds. Quality journalism costs money. Today, we're asking that you support us to do more. Kindly support our effort to deliver technology and finance journalism to everyone in the world. Donate as little as N1,000. Bank transfers can be made to: UBA Plc 1017156876 Communication Week Media Ltd

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Telcos Resume SIM Card Sales after 2-Week Halt

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Telecommunications operators have resumed full SIM swap and related services following a four-week nationwide outage linked to the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)’s migration to a new verification platform.

Telcos Resume SIM Card Sales after 2-Week Halt

The outage rendered millions of subscribers unable to perform SIM-related tasks such as swaps, replacements, and activations.

Operators in the industry say the disruption began on June 26, 2025 when telcos temporarily halted SIM registrations and swaps due to unforeseen technical challenges during the transition to NIMC’s upgraded identity verification system.

The migration was mandated to enhance the integrity and efficiency of national identity management but caused major service interruptions across all Nigerian networks.

However, July 21, both MTN and Airtel confirmed via their social media handles that SIM swap services have now fully resumed.

MTN announced: “SIM swaps have now resumed. We can confirm that NIMC services are fully operational and appreciate their support in the migration to a new platform for NIN verification services for the telecommunications industry.

In a public update issued via its MTN Nigeria Support handle on X (formerly Twitter), MTN confirmed that SIM swaps have now resumed.

Telecom operators complained that the portal was unreliable or inaccessible, which resulted in the suspension of SIM swaps, number porting, and new SIM registrations, even though NIMC maintained that the platform was operating as intended.

Unexpected technical difficulties arose during the switch to the new platform, according to the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria.

Real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and network migration was impacted by these issues.

“Unexpected technical difficulties have surfaced, impacting real-time NIN verification for SIM registration, replacement, and porting, following a recent directive from the National Identity Management Commission mandating Mobile Network Operators to transit to a new identity verification platform,” ALTON stated in a previous joint statement signed by Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, and Damian Udeh, publicity secretary.

 


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Nigeria, Others Achieve 84% Adult Mobile Phones Penetration

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The World Bank has affirmed that 84 per cent of adults in low-and middle-income economies, including Nigeria, own personal mobile phones.

The bank in its Global Findex 2025 report said mobile phone ownership was widespread and nearly everywhere. It said data from the Global Findex 2025 Digital Connectivity Tracker, revealed that “86 per cent of adults worldwide, and 84 per cent of adults in low- and middle-income economies, own personal mobile phones.”

The report pointed out that mobile phones and the internet had become widespread and essential to daily life in every economy around the world.

A earlier overview had indicated that Nigeria had a high mobile phone penetration rate, with estimates around 85 per cent to 87 per cent in 2024.

This translates to over 200 million mobile connections, making Nigeria a leading market in Africa for mobile phone ownership and usage. While the overall penetration is high, there’s a growing trend towards smartphone adoption, with forecasts predicting over 140 million smartphone users by 2025.

According to DataReporter, a total of 150 million cellular mobile connections were active in Nigeria in early 2025, with this figure equivalent to 64.0 per cent of the total population.

However, note that some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may not include access to the internet.

There were 107 million individuals using the internet in Nigeria at the start of 2025, when online penetration stood at 45.4 percent. Nigeria was home to 38.7 million social media user identities in January 2025, equating to 16.4 percent of the total population.

These headline stats offer a great overview of the “state of digital” in Nigeria at the start of 2025, but in order to make sense of how digital trends and behaviours have been evolving over time, we need to dig deeper into the data.

According to the World Bank, “as of 2024, individual ownership of mobile phones reached 86 per cent of adults worldwide.

“For many people, barely an hour goes by without their using a mobile device to make a call, ext a friend, read the news, access business information, post a meme on social media, pay for something, play a game, engage with a colleague or a customer, or search for information.

“As access to and use of digitally connected technologies increase, people, businesses, and governments place an increasingly high priority on online interactions. “Digitally connected technologies have clear, well-documented benefits.”

It further highlighted that access to mobile phones and the internet was associated with reduced poverty, increased consumption, and more employment for individuals in lowand middle-income economies.

“Women also experience these benefits, as internet access enables access to flexible jobs3 and has been shown to increase female labor force participation. “Mobile phones also facilitate information sharing.

For instance, in agricultural contexts, farmers’ access to real-time prices and buyer demand data can inform their decisions on where to sell, enhancing market efficiency and reducing the distances they would otherwise travel to get the best return for their product and time.

“Internet access also helps create jobs and aids individuals and countries in exporting goods and services,” it added. The World Bank further noted that owning a mobile phone furthermore enabled financial access through mobile money and other mobile financial services.

It added that these financial accounts and services, typically offered by mobile network operators or fintech firms and accessed via networks of local agents, were associated with lower rates of poverty, increased consumption and savings,and greater resilience to economic shocks.


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Sophos Secures Leadership Spot in 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection

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Sophos, a global leader of innovative security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, today announced that it has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP), marking the 16th consecutive time the company has received this recognition.

Sophos has been recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP) since the inaugural publication for this category in 2007.

Sophos’ market-leading endpoint security solutions include Sophos Endpoint powered by Intercept X, Sophos Extended Detection and Response (EDR/XDR), and Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR).

Over 300,000 organizations trust Sophos endpoint security solutions to defend against cyberthreats, including advanced remote ransomware attacks and active adversaries.

Unique to Sophos, the solution includes adaptive defenses that automatically disrupt attackers by dynamically adjusting protection levels based on threat context.

“Sophos’ strength lies in its prevention-first strategy, designed to stop breaches before they start, adapt defenses in real time, and strengthen detection and response when it matters most,” said Kyle Falkenhagen, SVP, Product Management, Sophos. “We believe that receiving this recognition in the highly competitive endpoint security market for 16 consecutive reports reflects our relentless focus on developing innovative solutions that stay ahead of the global threat landscape and the adversaries we face every day.”

Sophos and Secureworks: The future of protection, detection, and response

Following Sophos’ acquisition of Secureworks in February 2025, combining two leading and complementary portfolios to offer a comprehensive suite of solutions for small, midmarket and enterprise organizations.

Secureworks Taegis XDR customers can use Sophos Endpoint to elevate their cyber defenses, at no additional charge, delivering both improved protection and return on investment.

The integration of Secureworks also adds a new Counter Threat Unit (CTU) to the Sophos X-Ops advanced threat response joint task force, further expanding the rich threat intelligence that informs all customers’ defenses.

Backed by Sophos’ advanced security technologies and a broad network of intelligence contacts and partners, the CTU plays a critical role in identifying and tracking threat actors and analyzing anomalous activity, uncovering new attack techniques, threats, and major shifts in the threat landscape.


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