As Nigeria continues to strengthen its regulatory framework for financial technology and cross-border payments, founder of Vector and former senior product leader at Duplo, Kelvin Efosa Obasuyi, has warned African fintech founders against treating regulatory compliance as an afterthought in product development.
Obasuyi, who has built and licensed cross-border financial infrastructure across three jurisdictions on two continents, said many fintech companies make the costly mistake of building products first and engaging compliance experts only when they are ready to launch or seek regulatory approval.
He described the approach as a structural problem within the African fintech ecosystem, noting that regulatory requirements often determine critical product and infrastructure decisions from the outset.
Sharing his experience building Vector’s treasury and settlement infrastructure, Obasuyi recalled that three months into the project, the company’s compliance counsel warned that the architecture being developed would require significant modification before it could be assessed by a serious regulator.
‘I heard her. I continued building the way we were building. Fourteen months later, I rebuilt,’ he said, describing the experience as a lesson for founders building financial products.
According to him, the cost of ignoring early regulatory advice goes beyond legal fees, extending to engineering resources, delayed market entry and difficulties establishing banking relationships.
He explained that decisions about how customer funds are held, how transactions are reconciled and how the provenance of funds is demonstrated are not merely compliance issues but fundamental product decisions.
‘A platform that allows a business to hold and move value across currencies is, in every serious financial jurisdiction, a regulated activity,’ he said.
Obasuyi said Vector currently holds Money Services Business status in Canada, MSB registration in the United States and an International Money Transfer Operator licence in Nigeria.
He added that obtaining the approvals required a product and compliance infrastructure that regulators could properly evaluate, stressing that regulatory engagement must begin before a product architecture is fully established.
He, however, cautioned founders against assuming that regulatory approval in one jurisdiction automatically provides a blueprint for another.
According to him, the requirements for Vector’s IMTO licence in Nigeria differ significantly from those for MSB status in Canada and the regulatory obligations applicable across the United States.
He noted that jurisdictions have different interpretations of issues including custody of funds, reportable transaction thresholds, local presence and directorship requirements.
Obasuyi urged fintech product leaders to treat regulatory requirements as product requirements rather than as a checklist to be addressed after development.
He advocated embedding compliance counsel into product development from the earliest stages, while building reconciliation, reporting and other regulatory capabilities before regulators demand them.
He also advised founders to consider their licensing trajectory when choosing corporate structures and banking relationships, rather than focusing exclusively on speed to market.
Beyond avoiding regulatory setbacks, Obasuyi said compliance-by-design could provide a significant commercial advantage by strengthening the confidence of banks, institutional partners and enterprise customers.
He argued that companies capable of demonstrating genuine regulatory seriousness are more likely to be viewed by financial institutions as credible infrastructure partners rather than potential risks.
‘For product leaders building in African markets specifically, the temptation to defer regulatory engagement is structural, not merely cultural,’ he said.
Obasuyi maintained that fintech companies seeking to scale across multiple jurisdictions must move away from viewing compliance solely as a cost centre and instead regard it as a core design discipline that should be present from the first architecture discussion.
Kelvin Efosa Obasuyi is the founder of Vector and a former senior product leader at Duplo. He has built and licensed cross-border financial infrastructure across three jurisdictions on two continents.