CreditChek, a Lagos-born credit infrastructure startup, has raised $600,000 to scale its data coverage in East Africa.
CreditChek, a Lagos-born credit infrastructure startup, has raised $600,000 to scale its data coverage in East Africa. The company empowers fintechs and traditional lenders to assess risk and reduce loan defaults using a mix of traditional and alternative data. With this new capital, CreditChek aims to bridge the credit data gap in East African markets where reliable financial profiles are still difficult to access.
Established in 2021 by co-founders Kingsley Ibe and Lionel Orishane, CreditChek offers a unified API that consolidates information from credit bureaus, financial institutions, and alternative data sources. This infrastructure empowers lenders to conduct real-time borrower risk assessments with greater accuracy.
The round was led by Janngo Capital, with participation from existing investor Assembly Investors and new investors Vastly Valuable Ventures and Unipeg Capital.The company plan to launch it’s first outside Nigeria in countries like Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda where they plans to deepen integrations with banks, microfinance institutions, and fintech lenders.
This expansion occurs at a critical juncture, as African lenders continuously navigate the tension between driving financial inclusion and managing credit risk. According to development finance estimates, the continent’s micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) face a staggering funding shortfall exceeding $330 billion. This massive credit gap persists largely because fragmented financial data and sparse credit histories continue to restrict traditional lending.
The startup is positioning itself to lender as the provider of credit intelligence, income verification, and risk-assessment tools that help determine a borrower’s ability and willingness to repay.
“Our mission is to build the data infrastructure that gives lenders access to richer, more dependable insights,” said Kingsley Ibe, co-founder and CEO of CreditChek. “This new capital enables us to scale our infrastructure and deepen partnerships across East Africa, moving us closer to an ecosystem where credit decisions are faster, more reliable, and highly inclusive.”
According to the company, loans underwritten via its data infrastructure have achieved a greater than 75% reduction in delinquency rates when compared to traditional underwriting frameworks.
“We are proud to lead this investment round in CreditChek, a company developing the foundational credit data infrastructure necessary to scale responsible lending across Africa,” said Fatoumata Bâ, Founder and Executive Chair of Janngo Capital. “By empowering lenders to leverage alternative data for better decision-making, CreditChek is expanding access to finance for millions of underserved individuals and businesses, directly tackling the continent’s estimated $331 billion MSME financing shortfall.”
CreditChek strategically targeted Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda due to their accelerating digital lending ecosystems and surging demand for consumer and commercial credit. The scale of these markets is evident in recent data: by February 2026, Kenya’s licensed Digital Credit Providers (DCPs) had issued 7.5 million loans totaling KES133.5 billion ($1 billion). Meanwhile, Uganda’s mobile money payments have sustained a 25% average annual growth rate since the 2020/2021 financial year, and Rwanda’s financial inclusion rate climbed to 96% in 2024.
CreditChek operates on a pay-as-you-go revenue model, charging clients a fixed fee per transaction for platform access. Backed by the Baobab Network, the startup recently partnered with Bboxx a data-driven super platform delivering essential products across Africa under Nigeria’s Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project.
This partnership aims to extend solar financing to 17 million rural Nigerian households. The startup, which is already profitable in Nigeria, processed over $60 million in credit applications across one million unique customer profiles in 2025.
