Kristin Myers: My guest was turned down for a credit card 17 times, and not because he couldn’t pay, but because he had arrived in this country without a credit history, and the system had no way to see him. He also spent years watching money take days to cross a border that a text message crosses instantly. And now he runs a company moving money for nearly 6 million people across 60 countries. But first, let’s take a look at what he’s building. The road from an idea to the opening bell starts right now.
Sending a text across the world takes seconds. So why does sending money across a border still take days? Well, that’s because of fees, middlemen, banks, currency conversions, and a global payment system built long before the digital economy. And that’s the problem Adeola is trying to solve. He founded Kredete, a financial infrastructure company using stablecoins to help move money across borders faster and more efficiently, and it’s already finding scale. Kredete says nearly 6 million customers use its platform across 60 countries, with thousands of businesses also using its payment rails.
But Adeola’s next bet goes beyond stablecoins. Kredete is building AI agents designed to help users actually manage and move their money, from making payments to scheduling transfers when exchange rates are more favorable. And with $22 million in Series A funding behind it, Kredete is looking to scale that model across emerging markets.
But here’s the challenge: moving money is one of the most regulated and competitive businesses in finance. Can Kredete turn stablecoins and AI into the new rails for global payments, and become the financial infrastructure that banks, businesses, and millions of consumers rely on? From Startup to Stock Exchange, Kredete founder and CEO Adeola is next.
Joining us now at the desk is Adeola, founder and CEO at Kredete. Adeola, thank you so much for joining us today.
Adeola Adedewe: Thank you, Kristin.
Kristin Myers: So I want to start with the background and what we just said, 17 rejections.
Adeola Adedewe: Yes.
Kristin Myers: Talk to us a little bit about that process, because that seems insane.
Adeola Adedewe: So when I moved to this country many years ago, that was my first experience of understanding that there are two types of markets. You have emerging markets, and you have developed markets. And one thing that is extremely profound in the United States is we’re very big on credit history. But as a Nigerian, when I migrated, we didn’t have access. So when I moved to this country, I wanted access to credit, but I did not have a history. So I kept on applying multiple times, and it counted negatively on my credit history. Therefore, the multiple rejections.
So there are three things you would see here. One, you have the educational gap, right? You have a lot of immigrants, about 51 million immigrants in the United States today. They have a background of lack of access and education. The second part is there is a history gap. You know, they are used to paying for things cash down, in an economy that is credit-bound versus a cash economy. And the last part is the infrastructure that actually connects these two economies together, both the developed markets and the emerging markets. So this is pretty much what we’re solving for today, trying to cover that gap as much as possible.
Kristin Myers: So talk to us a little bit, because I’m sure a lot of folks that already live here go and apply for a credit card or a loan, and they don’t really think about what’s happening on the back end, what those systems are looking for, and what they can and cannot see. So talk to us a little bit. Pull back that curtain. What are those systems actually looking at? What can they see, and what can they not see?
Adeola Adedewe: So many countries in emerging markets do not have a credit bureau system like we do here, like TransUnion, Experian, and the FICO score rating, right? So when they migrate, they have to start from scratch. Think of a young kid in his 20s who lived 20 years in his home country and has no credit history to account for it. So he’s not only moving across multiple oceans and seas to the United States or Europe, but he’s also starting afresh on his credit profile, right? His mates of that age bracket probably already have 18 years of credit history, right? So when they apply, they’re starting from scratch. So they need to be in a system that actually builds it for them.
So one of the things that we saw was, when immigrants move to the United States, one core transaction they do frequently is remittances back home. So we said, how can we convert that transaction history to an on-time payment that can be seen by the agencies, and create that ideology around payment infra, so that we can build their credit life as fast as possible? Think of it as a catch-up, right? They’re 18 years or 20 years behind. If they keep sending money every single month, they can play catch-up and build their credit history as fast as possible, so they can live the American dream, which is buying a house, buying a home, and basically things like that. So these are the things we saw on the back end that users were not seeing, or other financial infrastructure players as well.
Kristin Myers: So talk to me a little bit about sending money. You were just mentioning it a second ago. If I want to send money from New York to Lagos, walk me through the steps of what happens.
Adeola Adedewe: It’s a very, I would say, fragmented process.
Kristin Myers: Yeah.
Adeola Adedewe: And, you know, my background comes from JPMorgan, so I saw how all types of SWIFT messages moved, the MT103s, the MT202s, and basically different types of messaging systems. And I saw how inefficient it was. So the first thing we saw was that there are two types of systems. You have the pre-funded system, whereby if Kristin wants to send me money in Nigeria, you have to pre-fund on the back end, right? But this causes a huge cost of capital at scale. Then you have the card schemes, Visa, Mastercard, where they park money everywhere and use that money as a method of last settlement.
But in our case, we connected with the local institutions. So for example, I’ve been in 75 countries this year, 200 flights, connecting different countries to the United States via a single infrastructure. What does that mean? I want to connect the Zelle-type system in the US to every Zelle-type system everywhere in the world, in Brazil, in Nigeria, in Indonesia, in Vietnam, as much as possible. So that is the infra we’ve built. So when you send $200 here, you are looking at a very simple front-end technology. But on the back end, multiple Zelle-like technologies have been connected to ensure that we can actually grow our infra at large scale. So basically, that’s what happens when you send $200 back home.
Kristin Myers: Okay. So I’m curious to know why it still takes so long, because it is 2026. If I send a Zelle to my friend here in the United States, a minute later they have the money in their account. In my mind, I should be able to send money to someone in Spain, or in Senegal, or in China, somewhere, fairly instantaneously. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case at all. So why is it actually taking so long? Is it because of that fragmented system that you’re talking about, that the Zelles are not connected with each other? Or is there something else that’s happening behind the scenes that’s causing those delays?
Adeola Adedewe: So it’s a great question, and I would ask you, Kristin: when you send a wire payment, it’s not instant. You send an ACH payment, to some extent. You get your direct deposit. They probably send it on Wednesday. You get it on Friday, right? That’s how it works. If you send a wire, it has a cutoff time before 6 p.m. But on a peer-to-peer network, we’re sending payments to each other because the Zelle network connected the largest banks together in the United States, saying, at the end of the month, you need to tell me what I owe you, and then we reconcile. But before then, I can send that to you in real time. So in the US, because it’s dollar payments, they’ve created the illusion of real-time payments for users like me and you.
Okay, but now tell me what happens when you send payments to Senegal. The bank in Senegal is not connected to that system. So they haven’t really created an infra to actually receive the dollars in real time. So what happens in many cases is that a company, over the last 20 years, would open up a bank account with a local bank and use their capital to convert and settle and create the illusion of real-time payments. But what happens is there is a cost of capital flight, which increases the fee. So that’s why you see MoneyGram and others are super expensive. Up to 20% of the cost is because they have to use their capital, and they have to earn some money. And over the last ten years, you’ve seen new companies like [unclear: “Germany”] spin up in this space. But still, they fall under the same category, whereby they haven’t created the infra.
So what we did was, we looked at the different types of players over the last two decades and wanted to build an interconnectivity, because that’s actually how real-time payments have been moved, thanks to stablecoins, which is one of my infrastructure views on the digital asset side.
Kristin Myers: And I want to get into that. But before I do, is this, as you see it, a tech problem, or rather the fact that the United States is so far behind? Because I used to live in both the UK and in Norway. My best friends still live there. My brother lives in Belgium. And when I’m there, using my British bank account, I have no problem sending money to other countries, from Norway to England, England to Belgium. And we’re dealing with, in some instances, different currencies, right? The entire eurozone is not all using the euro. But in my experience, the banking system inside of Europe was light-years ahead, technologically at least, compared to the US banking system. And so is this a problem of the US banking system still utilizing these very old payment systems and rails along which money moves?
Adeola Adedewe: It’s a great question, and I’ll give two responses. First, in Europe, there’s something called SEPA. I believe that’s the holy grail of technology, whereby you live in Belgium, you live in Norway, you live in Denmark, you are connected to that system, whereby even if you have your local currency, whatever it is, you can actually connect to the SEPA Instant network and credit multiple positions in real time with a credit ledger. So that is a reference for what we’re trying to do.
But then, in the United States, like I said, I’ve been to 75 countries. The US dollar is the most demanded product globally. I can travel to the most remote village in Nigeria and pay cash in dollars, and it will be accepted. But I might not do that with any other currency, because they do not know the currency. So what does that tell you? It’s a closed system in the United States because of the value of the dollar. The technology hasn’t been able to transact across borders until, I would say, the last five years. Stablecoin, which is the digital asset technology token, has created that possibility for people to be able to hold dollars in their local market. And that’s why we’re seeing new innovations.
And that is the technology we’re able to tap into, to be able to utilize the dollar outside the closed loop for providing access. And thankfully, you know, October 21st, [unclear: “the feds ock”] put up the GENIUS Act around validating this product. So, you know, we’ll see more technologies in this space over a period of time. But yes.
Kristin Myers: So really quickly, before we go to break, in about 30 seconds, and we’ll be staying with you through the break: talk to me about that stablecoin. I’m using that to send a payment. But if someone in Nigeria wants naira on the other end, how does that work? How does that transition work?
Adeola Adedewe: It’s a great, great infrastructure. The dollar brand is also mostly known, versus the stablecoin technology. So what we did was, we benefit from the speed and reliability of stablecoin, and we completely abstract it on the back end. But on the front end, facing the banks and the network, we show the dollars, because it’s one-to-one, right? So if you’re sending a dollar, I can give you a stablecoin pegged to the dollar at the same price. So that’s how we made it known to the Global South, which is, when I walk into a bank and I tell them I can deliver the dollars to you in real time, they look at the technology, but they also associate it with the brand of the dollar. It’s not just stablecoin technology. So when we integrate with [unclear: “the attack”], we can then get the local currency liquidity in real time, as fast as possible, to ensure my users can then send their deposits to the recipients, also in real time, all reconciled on the blockchain network.
Kristin Myers: What happens when you send money across a border? Well, you hand it to your bank, and your bank might not have a relationship with a bank on the other end. So it goes through a correspondent bank that does. Sometimes it’s two correspondent banks. And there’s a fee at every single hop, and there are compliance checks at every single stop, and every one of them works banking hours in its own time zone. Hours, two days. That’s $208 trillion moved across borders last year that way. And sending $200 costs an average of three and a half to 15%, depending on who you use. In the most expensive corridors, it can be more than 20%. A text message, however, crosses the same border in a second.
We’re back now with Adeola Adedewe, founder and CEO at Kredete. So we were just talking about how stablecoins are making this whole process much, much faster. Let’s talk about something that’s even bigger, which is actually going to be AI, because you’ve said AI agents have already completed more than 310,000 payments on your network. That’s not even a pilot. So talk me through that.
Adeola Adedewe: So one of the things we’ve seen is that our core technology was built by engineers, right? So when engineers build technology, it’s a script, or a smart routing-based system. And what we’ve seen is we’ve grown to hundreds of millions in transaction count and value, and we’ve done that with people building it, which is engineers in front of a computer. We believe now, with AI, this technology can actually scale to the next trillion counts of payments. And what does that really do? So we believe that the third level of customers on our infra would actually be AI agents shopping for things online.
Kristin Myers: Sorry, you said a third? I just need you to repeat that. Okay. A third of your customers will actually be AI.
Adeola Adedewe: Yes. Because we have people, we have businesses, right? And now we believe that AI agents will be our third level of customers. Why? Because now they’re embedded into the interfaces of customers, on WhatsApp, on iMessage, in their emails. They can negotiate contracts. Once they’ve negotiated the contract, they’ve been able to ensure that they’ve put the vendor details in. The next thing is to make a payment. They can also find the best and most cost-effective payment routing for their clients, to save costs. For us, we’ve increased our margins over 20% over the last 12 months using AI in our infrastructure. That just shows you the power of this technology, and of having them as a customer, but also as an infrastructure player as well.
Kristin Myers: So talk me through a sort of real-life example, something that an agent is doing today, or probably will do tomorrow, that a person would otherwise have to do.
Adeola Adedewe: So we are integrated with over a thousand banks across 60 countries. And when an engineer integrates that technology via an API, it gets the necessary messaging system to make a transaction, but it isn’t really smart around the best timing for transactions. So it’s 5 p.m. here today. It can be 11 p.m. Lagos time. It can be maybe 12 a.m. South African time. Different time zones, therefore different cost structures across different time zones. The agent then picks that up and creates the best margin per transaction, right?
So every user sleeps, right? We have to sleep. But the agent also ensures that when your customers in over 100-plus countries are transacting, each transaction is at its most optimal transaction value, for both us as a company and also for the engineers. So whenever they log in in the morning, they already have most of the transactions already settled in real time. So that’s what we see as the difference between engineers and agents.
Kristin Myers: So let’s talk about accuracy, because this is the big question when it comes to AI. What happens if the software gets it wrong, and folks are, as you say, asleep?
Adeola Adedewe: It’s built-in guardrails. Remember I talked about behavior patterns and systems? So, say you’ve been a customer of mine for the last five years. I know when Kristin goes to bed. I know when Kristin sleeps. I know when she wakes up in the morning. I know when she sent money to her mother in Dominica, or wherever it is, Guyana, right? I know when you happen to go on vacation, your summer, right? We have your data for the last five years. So we’re training this agent based on that, obviously encrypted. So the agent doesn’t have your PII information, but it has the necessary data points effectively tied to your transactions.
So what we’ve done is we’ve trained our agent with the necessary guardrails to have multiple types of checks before each transaction is made, because they work in milliseconds, and engineers sometimes work in seconds or minutes. So they have all of this back-end information, enough to make the right choices. So we’ve not seen any negative payments, except if a user, for example, wants to send a payment to a JPMorgan account and puts in the wrong routing number. The agent would still not catch that user error.
Kristin Myers: Exactly.
Adeola Adedewe: It’s still user-driven errors versus agent errors.
Kristin Myers: So talk me through compliance, because a lot of sending payments is heavily regulated by every individual country. As you mentioned, you’ve been in 75 countries just this year alone. Kredete’s in 60 countries.
Adeola Adedewe: 60-plus countries at the moment.
Kristin Myers: And now, obviously, you’re adding in that AI component. A lot of compliance deals with human decisions, right? At least here in the United States, we are still dealing with humans making those decisions, and our compliance and regulatory rules are still built around humans making those decisions. So how does that compliance work for you guys, especially when you have so many AI agents, you know, making some of these decisions? And how are you dealing with that on a cross-border level?
Adeola Adedewe: So first, we’re a licensed company. We have licenses in 13 geographic regions. So in the US, we have licensing across 20 states. In Canada, we have a license. In Europe, we have an upcoming license. We have a license in the UK, in Argentina, and in Nigeria. So I can go on and on with our license stack, which means we’re a compliance-first company. Inasmuch as we believe in the core benefit of an AI agent infrastructure, we will never have it exclusively touch PII data, because we need to be GDPR-compliant. And we also ensure that our agents are being built hand in hand with an AML or BSA officer, right? They can actually see some of the KYC risks tied to this agent.
So our compliance team is heavily in the process, to ensure that we have our AI policy met across all of the agents, and can freeze them if they see any unnecessary process. But also, these are mini transactions. In the United States, Coinbase had mentioned that x402 is doing about $0.30 per transaction on the agents. So as we start seeing these agents take charge of larger transactions, we believe that, with our license structure, our regulators will probably work hand in hand with us to see what additional guidelines and rules they will need us to have embedded before we can actually have these agents scale. But for now, it’s still around peer-to-peer payments.
Kristin Myers: Speaking about Kredete’s scale, why did you decide to start in emerging markets? Was that just because of your background story, or was there an actual business reason as well?
Adeola Adedewe: Yes. The IMF made [unclear: “the Pollstar round”] how developed markets are growing versus emerging markets. I believe last year, emerging markets grew nearly two times faster than developed markets. So just think of the unique economics around emerging markets. It’s a lot better. They lack access; therefore, we see a business opportunity. But one of the things we saw was that they needed access to, and had demand for, the dollar and other products and technologies of developed markets, hence why we believed that we were ripe to provide this infra.
My background stemmed from JPMorgan, spinning around infrastructure for the last ten years. We believed that we were the right fit to tackle this problem, because we had experience on both sides. So business-continuity-wise and also unit-economics-wise, emerging markets are much more attractive. And then infrastructure-wise, we could get our necessary licenses here in the US to provide access to the Global South. That was the main reason why we went to the emerging markets versus the developed market ecosystem.
Kristin Myers: So I’m curious to know what’s next for Kredete as you’re looking at scaling, right? Because with stablecoins, there are a lot of big banks moving into this very area. Do you worry about the competition that you might face as some of these other companies catch on to doing what you have already been doing for quite some time?
Adeola Adedewe: So the core moat for us is the ability to connect as many banking networks as possible on [unclear: “a cold ledger”], right? We believe we’re at least five years ahead of anyone within the space, because there are two types of integration. You can work by getting a bank account, but you can also have API connectivity to these banks, which means you need to study the banks. You need to have a flexible technology across multiple banks across the Global South. And doing it in 60 countries is very painful, right? So it’s a very forward step ahead of the traditional companies. And then the banks, the incumbents, look at their core infrastructure. It’s very incumbent-driven. So we don’t see them as a competitor, more like a customer in the near-term future, once they’re ready to [unclear: “attack”].
Kristin Myers: So I have to ask you this question. I ask everyone this question. We are obviously sitting on the floor of the stock exchange.
Adeola Adedewe: Yes.
Kristin Myers: The bell is right back over there. Do you think about going public? What do you think about, and when might that day come? Because I always like to ask when folks might be ringing that bell behind me.
Adeola Adedewe: You know, our business is growing very fast, about 4x year over year. We believe that we are catching up to the public timeline. But then there’s also lots of capital in the private markets, right? Today, in this day and age, we’ve seen lots and lots of capital being deployed in AI. But most importantly, we see the value of the public market because we want to ensure, our business being global by nature, that we provide access to liquidity from a Global South perspective. So we would for sure want to, you know, go public on the New York Stock Exchange, and we believe that we’re racing to that process, you know, as soon as possible.
Kristin Myers: When is the right time?
Adeola Adedewe: ASAP.
Kristin Myers: We’ll have to have you join us when that happens. Thank you so much. Adeola, founder and CEO at Kredete.
