For Africans who work with international clients, receive payments from abroad, or run businesses that serve customers outside their home countries, accessing and managing foreign currency can be difficult. Cross-border payments often involve multiple intermediaries, high fees, lengthy processing times and limited access to reliable dollar accounts.
Cleva is building financial infrastructure to make those transactions simpler. Founded in 2023 by Tolu Alabi and Philip Adama Abel, the Nigerian fintech provides USD banking and payment services that allow individuals and businesses to receive international payments, hold foreign currency, make payments and convert funds into local currency.
Since launching, Cleva has expanded from its initial focus on USD accounts into a broader financial platform, adding business accounts, cards, savings, local transfers, rewards and stablecoin support.
Company Background
Cleva was founded to address the difficulties Africans face when participating in the global economy, particularly when receiving and managing international payments.
The company initially focused on Nigerian users, offering USD accounts that enabled freelancers, remote workers, creators and entrepreneurs to receive payments from international clients and businesses.
In January 2024, Cleva announced a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round led by 1984 Ventures, with participation from The Raba Partnership, Byld Ventures, FirstCheck Africa and angel investors. The company had also joined Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batch.
Cleva has since expanded its product offering and customer base. The company has reported significant growth in transaction volume and users, while continuing to develop services for both individuals and businesses.
Its business accounts now support USD, GBP and EUR, allowing companies that operate internationally to receive and manage payments in multiple currencies.
The Founders
Cleva was founded by Tolu Alabi and Philip Adama Abel.
Alabi is the company’s CEO. Before founding Cleva, she worked at Stripe as a product manager, where she worked on banking and issuing products. She also previously worked at Amazon and holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Abel is Cleva’s CTO and co-founder. His background is in software engineering and infrastructure, with previous experience at companies including AWS, Twilio and Akamai Technologies. He studied computer science and engineering at MIT and Georgia Tech.
Their backgrounds combine financial-product development with technical infrastructure, two areas central to Cleva’s business.
How Cleva Works
Cleva allows eligible users to create accounts for receiving and managing international payments.
After completing the required verification process, users can receive USD payments from international clients, employers and platforms through their Cleva accounts. The funds can then be held in dollars, spent through a Cleva card, converted into local currency or transferred to a local bank account.
The platform also supports stablecoin deposits, allowing users to move supported digital dollars such as USDT and USDC into their Cleva accounts.
For businesses, Cleva provides accounts in USD, GBP and EUR, alongside additional features designed for companies receiving international payments.
This gives customers a single platform for several parts of the cross-border payment process rather than requiring separate services for receiving, holding, converting and spending foreign currency.
Products and Features
USD Accounts
USD accounts are at the centre of Cleva’s platform. They allow eligible customers to receive international payments directly into dollar-denominated accounts. This is particularly useful for freelancers, remote workers, creators and businesses that earn revenue from international clients.
Customers can retain their funds in USD instead of automatically converting them into naira.
Business Accounts.
Business customers can open USD, GBP and EUR accounts and use the platform to receive international payments and manage foreign-currency funds.
The product is aimed at businesses such as agencies, professional-service companies, e-commerce businesses and other companies that regularly work with international customers or partners.
Cleva Card
The Cleva card gives users a way to spend their dollar balances online.
This can be useful for international subscriptions, software services, advertising and other online payments that require a foreign-currency payment method.
USD Savings
Cleva allows customers to hold their funds in USD and earn rewards on their dollar balances.
The feature gives users an additional reason to keep their money within the platform instead of using Cleva only as a temporary account for receiving international payments.
Cleva Points
Cleva Points introduces a rewards programme into the platform.
Users can earn points through qualifying transactions and redeem them for value within the Cleva ecosystem. The company has also expanded the programme to allow customers to redeem points for mobile data.
Stablecoin Support
Stablecoins are another component of Cleva’s platform.
Customers can deposit supported stablecoins, including USDT and USDC, providing an additional route for moving dollar-denominated value into the platform.
For Cleva, stablecoins are primarily useful as part of the infrastructure for moving value across borders rather than as an investment product.
Local Currency Transfers
After receiving or holding funds in USD, customers can convert their money into local currency and transfer it to local bank accounts.
For Nigerian customers, this connects international dollar earnings with the domestic banking system within the same platform.
The Technology Behind Cleva
Cleva combines traditional financial infrastructure with digital-asset technology to facilitate international payments.
The company supports conventional payment rails, including ACH and wire transfers, while also incorporating stablecoins such as USDT and USDC into its platform.
This hybrid approach allows Cleva to use different forms of payment infrastructure depending on the transaction while keeping the customer experience relatively simple.
The customer does not need to understand the underlying payment rails or blockchain networks to use the service. From the user’s perspective, the process remains similar to using a digital banking platform: receive money, view a balance, make a payment, convert currency or transfer funds.
Blockchain therefore functions as part of the infrastructure rather than as the central product being sold to customers.
Ecosystem Impact
Cleva operates within a growing ecosystem of Africans earning and spending money across borders.
The rise of remote work, freelancing, digital services and international e-commerce has created more opportunities for African individuals and businesses to earn foreign currency. At the same time, the traditional financial system has not always provided simple ways for them to receive and manage those earnings.
By providing access to foreign-currency accounts and payment services, Cleva is helping connect African users to international financial networks.
The company has also built partnerships with organisations serving digitally skilled and entrepreneurial communities, including ALX, 3MTT and AltSchool.
Its work with Tether has further expanded its involvement in digital-finance education. In 2026, Cleva and Tether launched the Cleva x Tether Campus Storm, an initiative focused on introducing Nigerian university students to digital finance and emerging financial technologies.
These partnerships position Cleva not only as a payments company but also as part of the broader infrastructure developing around Africa’s digital economy.
Growth and Funding
Cleva has raised at least $1.5 million in publicly announced pre-seed funding.
The round, announced in January 2024, was led by 1984 Ventures, with participation from The Raba Partnership, Byld Ventures, FirstCheck Africa and angel investors.
The company has also reported strong growth in its transaction activity and customer base.
During its early period, Cleva reported processing more than $4 million in monthly transactions. By August 2025, the company said it had grown to more than 500,000 customers in Nigeria.
In 2026, Cleva reported that its user base had grown to more than 800,000 users in Nigeria, reflecting the expansion of its products beyond its original USD-account offering.
The company has also continued to increase its transaction limits and introduce products aimed at customers handling larger international payments.
What Makes Cleva Notable?
Cleva stands out because it is addressing a practical financial problem created by the increasingly global nature of African businesses and careers.
For a Nigerian freelancer, agency or business, earning dollars from an international customer is only one part of the equation. The money also needs to be received reliably, stored securely, spent when necessary and converted into local currency when required.
Cleva brings several of those functions together.Its evolution is also notable. The company began with a focused product for receiving USD payments and has gradually expanded into business banking, cards, savings, local transfers, rewards and stablecoin-enabled payments.
That expansion suggests that Cleva is seeking to become more than a specialised foreign-currency account. It is building a broader financial platform around the needs of people and businesses whose financial activity extends beyond their domestic markets.
What Comes Next?
Cleva’s next stage is centred on expanding its reach while deepening the products it already offers.
The company has outlined plans to expand beyond Nigeria, with Ghana, Uganda and South Africa identified among its target markets. It also plans to add more payment routes and continue strengthening its compliance and transaction-monitoring infrastructure.
The expansion of its business accounts and stablecoin capabilities could also give Cleva more opportunities to serve companies operating across multiple markets.
Ultimately, the company’s growth will depend on how effectively it can build reliable financial infrastructure around Africa’s increasingly international workforce and business community.
As more Africans earn, save, spend and operate businesses in multiple currencies, the demand for simpler cross-border financial services is likely to grow. Cleva is positioning itself to serve that demand by bringing international payments, foreign-currency accounts and digital financial tools into a single platform.