A fintech can build a wallet, a lending product or a payment platform, but giving users a physical or virtual card usually requires another layer of infrastructure.
The Nigerian fintech provides an open API that allows businesses to create, issue and manage physical and virtual payment cards, while also providing account infrastructure and other financial features. Instead of building card issuance, account management and transaction controls from scratch, companies can connect to Sudo’s infrastructure and build those features into their own products. That makes Sudo less of a consumer-facing fintech and more of a financial infrastructure company.
Its technology sits behind the products that businesses build for their own customers. From the programmable cards and spending controls to virtual bank accounts and real-time transaction authorisation, Sudo is building infrastructure designed to make financial products easier to launch and customise across Africa.
From building fintech products to building the infrastructure behind them
Sudo’s story began before the company itself was created. Founders Aminu Bakori and Kabir Shittu had previously worked together on fintech products, including Payant, a platform that helped Nigerian freelancers receive international payments, and Dot, an application that allowed users to connect multiple bank accounts and use a single card across them.
According to Sudo’s own account of its history, the founders began building the infrastructure in 2020 after encountering difficulties issuing cards for their previous startup. They realised that other companies building fintech products could benefit from the same infrastructure.
Sudo was subsequently founded by Bakori and Shittu as a platform for businesses that wanted to issue cards without having to build the underlying systems themselves.
The company’s early proposition was focused on programmable physical and virtual cards.
That remains central to Sudo today, but its infrastructure has expanded into account management and other financial services.
How Sudo’s infrastructure works
Sudo’s core product is its API. An API allows different software systems to communicate with each other. In Sudo’s case, a fintech or other business can connect its own application to Sudo’s APIs and use them to create and manage financial products.
A business can create a customer, issue a card, connect the card to an account and control how that card can be used. Sudo’s API documentation provides endpoints for creating and managing cards, customers, accounts and transfers. The platform also provides a dashboard for companies that prefer to manage some functions without building everything through code.
This gives developers a set of building blocks rather than a finished consumer application. The company describes this approach as programmable financial infrastructure: businesses can take Sudo’s underlying capabilities and build their own financial experiences around them. Sudo does not need to determine what a fintech’s final product should look like. Its role is to provide the infrastructure that allows the fintech to create it.
Programmable physical and virtual cards
Businesses can use the API to issue both physical and virtual cards in supported currencies and card schemes. The current API documentation supports physical and virtual cards, with options including NGN and USD and card brands such as Verve, AfriGo, Mastercard and Visa.
This gives businesses flexibility in how they design their card programmes. A fintech could issue virtual cards for online spending. A company could issue physical cards to employees. A platform could create cards for customers as part of a larger financial product.
Sudo also allows businesses to customise the cards they issue. Its card infrastructure supports branded physical cards, with Sudo handling card production, fulfilment and shipping while the business controls the customer-facing experience. The result is a financial product that can carry the identity of the company using the infrastructure rather than Sudo’s own brand.
Spending controls give businesses more control
Sudo’s card infrastructure goes beyond simply creating card numbers. Businesses can program how their cards behave. The platform supports spending limits, merchant-category restrictions and controls for channels such as ATM, POS, web and mobile transactions. Companies can also approve or decline transactions in real time according to their own rules.
This makes the cards useful for more than ordinary consumer spending. A company managing employee expenses, for example, can create cards with specific spending limits.
A business operating a marketplace could issue cards with restrictions designed around how its customers use the platform. A fintech could create a virtual-card product and control the transaction experience through its own application. Sudo therefore turns a card from a static payment instrument into something that can be programmed around a particular financial use case.
Accounts are becoming another layer of Sudo’s infrastructure
Sudo has expanded beyond card issuing with its account management platform.Its infrastructure allows businesses to create and manage local and international virtual bank accounts, giving users ways to hold funds and manage cash flow.
The API documentation currently supports NGN and USD accounts, with savings and current account types available through the account API. Sudo’s account infrastructure also connects directly with its card system.
Its documentation notes that each issued card has a corresponding account that holds its funds, while Naira accounts can receive funds from other banks through NIP. The API also provides functionality for account balances, transaction histories, transfers and transfer-rate information.
This brings cards and accounts into the same infrastructure layer.A company can therefore build a product where customers have an account, receive funds into it and spend those funds through an associated card.
The technology is designed for developers
The company provides API documentation, developer guides and a sandbox environment where businesses can test financial features before deploying them.
The production and sandbox environments are separated, allowing developers to test operations without immediately running them in a live environment.
This is particularly useful for fintech companies because financial infrastructure has to be tested carefully before it reaches customers.
Instead of developing an entire card and account system internally, a company can build its customer experience while using Sudo’s APIs for the underlying financial functions.
Sudo also provides a vault infrastructure for sensitive card information. Its documentation explains that card-data requests are routed through the vault to support PCI-compliant handling and stronger card-data security.
Sudo also handles part of the financial infrastructure
One of the less visible parts of financial technology is everything that has to happen behind the interface. A company may have a great application, but it still needs relationships with financial institutions, compliance processes, card networks and other infrastructure providers.
Sudo positions itself as handling much of that underlying work. The company’s website says it manages the compliance and banking relationships required for customers using its infrastructure, allowing businesses to focus more on building their products.
That is an important part of the infrastructure model. The company building a financial application does not necessarily need to become an expert in every component required to issue a card or manage an account. Sudo provides the financial building blocks while the business focuses on the product and its users.
Sudo and AfriGo
Sudo has also participated in the development of Nigeria’s domestic card ecosystem through its partnership with AfriGo.
The company announced a partnership with AfriGo to provide customised and co-branded cards, combining Sudo’s programmable card infrastructure with Nigeria’s domestic card scheme.
The partnership is significant because it demonstrates how Sudo’s infrastructure can work with different payment schemes rather than being tied to a single global card network.
Its API documentation currently lists AfriGo alongside Verve, Mastercard and Visa as supported card brands.
That gives developers more options when designing card programmes for the Nigerian market.
It also places Sudo within the wider development of domestic payment infrastructure in Africa.
The $3.7 million pre-seed round
In March 2022, the company raised $3.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Global Founders Capital. The round included Picus Capital, LoftyInc Capital, Rallycap Ventures, Kepple Africa, Berrywood Capital, ZedCrest and Suya Ventures. Several African fintech founders also participated, including Flutterwave’s Olugbenga Agboola, Chipper Cash’s Ham Serunjogi and PiggyVest’s Odunayo Eweniyi.
At the time, Sudo planned to use the funding to expand beyond Nigeria, grow its team and develop its technology.
The investment also reflected growing interest in financial infrastructure companies that could provide the systems behind Africa’s expanding fintech sector.
Rather than building a single financial application for consumers, Sudo was building infrastructure that could potentially support many different applications.
Building a programmable financial layer for Africa
Sudo’s broader contribution to African fintech is its focus on making financial infrastructure programmable. Traditional financial products often require businesses to work with multiple providers and systems before they can offer something as familiar as a card or account.
Sudo brings many of those capabilities into an API-driven platform. A developer can create a customer, open an account, issue a physical or virtual card, define spending controls and monitor transactions through programmable infrastructure.
Instead of every company building the same basic infrastructure repeatedly, businesses can build differentiated products on top of shared financial rails. This is increasingly important as African fintech moves from simple payment applications toward more specialised financial products. The companies building the next generation of financial services do not all need to build their own card processors, account systems or transaction-management infrastructure.
What comes next for Sudo
Sudo’s current positioning shows an infrastructure company that has expanded beyond its original card-issuing focus.
Its platform now combines programmable physical and virtual cards with account management, transaction controls, developer tools and other financial capabilities. The company describes this as a broader programmable card and payments infrastructure for Africa.
Its recent product development also points toward deeper infrastructure for financial institutions.
In a 2026 post, Sudo introduced Sudo Card Core, positioning it as infrastructure for banks and fintechs to build, launch and manage card programmes, alongside Sudo Cloud Cards, which can digitise existing and new cards for mobile and contactless payments.
That direction takes Sudo further into the infrastructure layer of African finance.The company started with the ability to issue cards.It is now building more of the systems around those cards: accounts, controls, authorisation, digitalisation and developer infrastructure.
The next generation of financial products will not only be defined by the applications customers see. They will also depend on the infrastructure underneath them.
Sudo is positioning itself to be part of that layer, providing the programmable financial rails that allow businesses across Africa to create, customise and launch their own financial experiences.