👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Zedcrest acquires Leatherback

Five years after backing cross-border payments startup Leatherback, Nigerian financial services group Zedcrest has decided it no longer wants to be just an investor. It now owns the company.

What happened? On Monday, Zedcrest acquired Leatherback for an undisclosed amount, noting that it plans to revive the startup’s cross-border payments ambitions, saying the opportunity remains “significantly underpenetrated.” According to the company, Leatherback will continue to operate independently under its own brand, team, and product suite, separating it from Zedcrest’s deeper traditional finance and wealth management focus.

Why did Zedcrest acquire Leatherback? Some investors wait for exits; others actively engineer them. Like in the case of OmniRetail and Traction Apps in 2024, investors saw an opportunity to bring payments infrastructure, licences, merchant relationships, and distribution under one roof instead of waiting for another buyer. With Leatherback, Zedcrest appears to have reached a similar conclusion: the fintech was becoming more valuable as part of its broader financial services ecosystem than as a standalone portfolio investment. The acquisition gives Zedcrest something it didn’t fully own before: infrastructure for collecting, holding, converting, and moving money across borders.

It makes a lot of sense when you consider how Zedcrest has set up its businesses. The group lends money (through Zedvance Finance), manages investments, and advises businesses on raising capital. Now, it also owns the technology that lets those businesses collect, hold, convert, and send money across borders. That gives Zedcrest control over the customer experience and another revenue stream every time money moves.

Explain like I’m new here: To those unfamiliar, this love story was years in the making—albeit with some turbulent bumps. When Leatherback raised $10 million in a pre-seed round in 2021 (significant at the time, and notably, when it was simply a cross-border fintech then), Zedcrest led that round. But after a few years marred by operational setbacks and a leadership reshuffle, the company has set its sights on a fintech infrastructure play for businesses across several markets. Some of those businesses could already be sitting in Zedcrest’s orbit, allowing it to cross-sell Leatherback’s services and providing a distribution moat.

What Leatherback stands to gain. Expanding into new countries means regulatory compliance, new licences, new banking partners, and hiring compliance teams. That’s expensive. Being backed by a larger financial institution means Leatherback can spend less time worrying about money and focus on its business.