When automotive startup Carbin Africa launched in 2023, its core mandate was simple yet ambitious: solve the ‘messy middle’ of car commerce by digitising inventory and sales processes for merchants and dealerships in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest automotive market.
By the end of 2024, the company recorded a billion naira in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), selling more than 80 cars. Its primary differentiator was an AI-powered data platform that provides real-time access to 1,800 unique car listings across local dealerships, refreshed every 30 minutes.
At the time, one could have concluded that the startup had proven product-market fit. The startup, run by co-founders Fawaz Abdul and Femi Oriowo, had been doing this business since 2015 at the University of Lagos. They had stints at OLX and Cars45. However, selling cars was just one part of the Carbin Africa story.
The Birth of Car Flex
Alongside its core marketplace, Carbin Africa launched a suite of complementary products: Dealer Mart (a SaaS tool automating inventory sourcing, listings, and quality verification for dealers), Carbin Lease, and its breakout star, Car Flex.
Launched to support dealerships navigating tough macroeconomic conditions under the post-2023 government reforms, Car Flex is an asset-backed credit facility. It offers businesses and individuals immediate liquidity-up to 60 percent of a vehicle’s appraised value-within two hours of passing verification checks.
Unlike traditional unsecured fintech loans, Car Flex is anchored strictly by physical collateral: the vehicle and its verified documentation. If the loan is repaid, the car is returned; if a default occurs, Carbin repossesses the vehicle to recover the principal and interest through resale.
The public response was overwhelming. Receiving roughly 20 loan requests daily, the startup quickly realised it needed robust financial muscle to handle the surging demand.
Unlocking scale through the Regxta partnership
Carbin Africa initially partnered with digital lending platform Advancly. They said this in an earlier interview. However, given an automotive industry with high ticket sizes-minimum disbursements started at N1 million. Scaling required a partner deeply attuned to micro and small-scale enterprise financing.
‘In our case, our facilities were high ticket. Our minimum disbursement is a million naira. However, Regxta accommodated us and helped us grow faster,’ Oriowo said.
In October 2025, Carbin Africa partnered with Regxta, a prominent agent-banking network operating across 12 Nigerian states with nearly N12 billion in lifetime loan disbursements since 2021.
Regxta co-founder Afis Bello admitted there was initial hesitation. ‘The car market is riddled with unclear papers and, in some cases, inadequate information about a vehicle’s condition,’ he noted. However, after reviewing Carbin’s airtight operational controls, Bello and his team agreed to back them.
‘The essence of doing lending is to get money. My conversations with the Carbin Team showed that they had absolute control. And when I spoke with my co-founder, we agreed to back them,’ Bello said.
The partnership has scaled rapidly. Over the past year, Regxta has disbursed nearly N700 million ($500,000) through Car Flex, funding ticket sizes up to N40 million with an uptime exceeding 97 percent across more than 110 transactions. For Regxta, Carbin represents a high-performing seven percent allocation of its overall loan portfolio that yields safe, additional revenue streams.
Rigorous risk management and a ‘Zero NPL’ record
Oriowo said the first thing they did before getting a financial backer was to introduce a sort of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that helped them to land the right customer. No two cars are the same. The conditions do vary. Carbin Africa put up an inspection report that details the vehicle’s condition before doing a Know Your Customer check. Then they went further to set up a valuation mechanism that makes them lend no more than 60 percent of what the car is worth.
In addition to this process, they do a final check on the customer’s repayment history on credit bureaus. It just helps to preempt a case of eventual default. However, it is easier for the automotive startup since it also has some of the verification services built into its core offering.
So far, this partnership has recorded zero non-performing loans (NPLs). The demographics are small- and medium-scale businesses, with 30 percent being individuals.
Even when high-risk profiles emerge, Oriowo explains that the underlying asset serves as a secure buffer. ‘There are some customers we flag as likely to default, but we still process their facility because the asset they are putting forward is strong enough collateral to cover both the facility and interest.’
This arrangement is exciting to Carbin Africa because Regxta has been the best reliable partner in approvals and also cost of capital. For Regxta, Carbin Africa came with an offer too sweet to resist. They still support 90 percent of small and medium businesses, which is essentially the core of the fintech’s market. But 10 percent has been allocated to Carbin Africa, and in the past year they went from four percent of their loans to seven percent without recording a single NPL.
Bello ties the success to Carbin Africa’s excellence and their experience. ‘We brought our years of experience into making the product work,’ Bello said. ‘I have worked in up to six microfinance banks before, and that’s the way we were able to ensure we didn’t run into problems because the car business can be risky. One thing did strengthen the partnerships, though-the fact that both companies agreed to lend no more than 60 percent on the value of every car.
When pressed further to say why they joined the partnership, Bello said:
‘As a business, we exist to explore other opportunities. It is also a way to claim additional revenue. For instance, the capital we want to use for the year is N10 billion, and we are seeing a chance to invest an additional N1billion in a business we know there is zero risk to it. Why won’t we use the additional money for that business? It means additional revenue.’
Carbin Africa wants to build an underwriting engine as the way forward
Every successful partnership has its learning points, and for Carbin Africa, the last 11 months of the Regxta partnership were a huge learning curve. For Oriowo, the company is seeing downward pressure on cars, and with the help of artificial intelligence, it can now predict where the process will land and thus inform its valuation engine.
Carbin Africa is considering an underwriting engine at this point. This was an automobile startup that has now moved into fintech, or the sweet spot-lending.
‘We are building an underwriting engine to process transactions like this at scale,’ Oriowo said. For Oriowo, the next step is building scale. ‘In the next year, we can talk 10-15x because of what we’re doing underground to capture market share aggressively. We have received venture support and signed some strategic partnerships to help with scale beyond Lagos,’ he said.
Yet, the biggest challenge is no longer demand-it is capacity. Carbin Africa gets 20 car loan requests daily, which translates to 600 requests monthly. So far, they can only service five percent of those engagements. ‘The reason it is that way is because Lagos is just one state out of 36. And the bulk of the requests come in from places other than Lagos where we don’t currently have a presence. The product requires us to hold custody and set up holding locations in other places aside from Lagos, which we are currently working towards,’ Oriowo explained.
Oriowo is looking to Regxta to continue its purple patch. ‘Hardly will you find any lender with zero NPL. But we have been able to do it on a much smaller scale and are hoping to build on that going forward.’
Reflecting on the early days of scepticism surrounding automobile-backed lending, Oriowo remains bullish. ‘There is a lot of money out there, but also a lot of reluctance when it comes to automobiles. Cars can be a worthy collateral that unlocks massive value.’
‘When we started, we were conservative. In our first 3 months, we had a request for N750 million. A customer wanted to raise money to bridge liquidity gaps in his construction project. He had three units of 2025 Lexus LX 600. Each unit cost about N300 million. He was willing to bring those three to raise the money. He wanted N700 million. It took us three days to say no to the transaction after much consultation with my team.
‘Not because we didn’t know, but we hadn’t validated enough to undertake that kind of risk at the time. The higher you go in terms of car value, the lower you have to disburse relative to the valuation of the car, especially in the event of a default. You need to consider how willing an off-taker will pay to take the asset and provide that liquidity on demand.’
One of Carbin promises to Regxta was to recover liquidity from the underlying asset within 14 days of default. So far, they have touched around a fraction of what is possible.
‘Dealers are coming forward for this car flex product. Some of them say they have cars in ports and they need to submit their cars for custody and gain money to clear before redeeming the cars again,’ Oriowo said.
‘It dawned on me that there is a need for liquidity in this market. It is humongous,’ he added.