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Onafriq Closes Baxi, Its Nigerian Agent Banking Business, After Five Years
Five years after buying one of Nigeria’s larger independent agent networks, the pan-African payments company Onafriq has decided that running physical agents in the country no longer pays. TechCabal and other outlets reported that Onafriq Nigeria Payments Limited will wind down Baxi, its agent banking arm, in a decision announced on Friday, October 16.
The company’s explanation was blunt. It said inflation and the depreciation of the naira had cut trading volumes and raised operating costs, undermining the offline agent model, while stiffer competition squeezed margins. Another report described the pressure as coming also from the rapid spread of instant digital transfers, which reduce the need to visit an agent for cash services. Onafriq’s founder and chief executive, Dare Okoudjou, said the company entered Nigeria with conviction and commitment but did not achieve the outcome it set out for, and called the closure a difficult decision for colleagues, agents and partners who built the Baxi network.
The history explains why the decision stings. Onafriq, a South Africa-based group with operations in countries including Morocco, Mali, Kenya and Tanzania, entered Nigeria’s agent banking market in 2021 by acquiring Baxi, which was formally known as Capricorn Digital Limited. It then invested heavily through 2023 to strengthen and scale the agent network, a bet the company said reflected its belief that agents could widen financial access and digitise cash-based transactions. The market moved against it. A naira that has lost value over several years raises the dollar cost of equipment and funding, and agents earn thin margins per transaction, which leaves little room when costs climb.
A TechCabal follow-up published on October 19, by Emmanuel Nwosu, added a detail that changes how the closure reads: Onafriq had been negotiating a sale of Baxi in the months before announcing the shutdown. The same report said the group had already begun writing down the value of its Nigerian payments business, while other parts of its group-wide operations performed better. The reports reviewed do not name a prospective buyer or explain why talks failed, so the sale attempt is an indicator of how hard the business was to value, not a story with a known ending.
What does the closure affect, and what does it leave alone? Onafriq stresses that the decision is confined to agent banking and is not an exit from Nigeria. It will keep operating through its cross-border payments network and its card-issuing services, and says it wants to embed those products in the Nigerian ecosystem while refocusing on pan-African payments. Baxi agents have been moved to another principal bank, according to the company, so the people running point-of-sale and cash-service outlets are not left without a provider. Employees whose jobs are tied to the agent business are the ones affected, and Onafriq says they will be consulted and supported. The reports do not give staff numbers, agent counts or details on customer balances, so anyone with funds or a terminal under the Baxi brand should check directly with the company or their principal bank.
For the wider industry, the lesson is about economics rather than demand. Agent banking still matters in a country where cash remains widely used, but national reach does not guarantee a profitable network, as one analysis of the closure put it. Rivals with larger user bases, cheaper funding or additional revenue lines can absorb the squeeze that Baxi could not. Watch whether other agent networks consolidate, whether fees at point-of-sale outlets rise, and whether Onafriq discloses what happens to the Baxi brand and assets.
