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From digital banking infrastructure to cross-border commerce, the Nigerian software engineer and CTO is helping FXKudi Group address the technological challenges of moving money and goods between African markets.
For businesses across West Africa, cross-border trade can mean navigating different currencies, banking systems, payment providers and logistics networks for a single purchase.
According to the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Africa’s merchandise trade reached approximately $1.5 trillion in 2024, including $220.3 billion in trade between African countries. Yet fragmented infrastructure continues to complicate moving money and goods across borders.
Adedeji Rotibi, a Nigerian software engineer and technology executive, is working on that challenge as Technical Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of FXKudi Group, the parent company behind digital banking and payments platform VTMoney and cross-border commerce and logistics business Clozar.
Entrepreneur Tunji Abioye established FXKudi Group in 2020. Rotibi joined in 2022 as Technical Co-Founder and CTO, bringing hands-on engineering experience to the group’s banking technology and subsequent product expansion.
From Facebook curiosity to engineering leadership
Rotibi’s interest in software began with a question familiar to many young internet users: how did Facebook work? He wanted to understand how code could connect millions of people and deliver messages almost instantly. That curiosity led him into programming and later to a Computer Science degree at the University of Lagos.
- “I remember using Facebook and wondering what was actually happening behind the interface. Someone had written instructions somewhere that allowed millions of people to communicate. I became more interested in understanding how it worked than simply using it.” Rotibi said.
He went on to complete two software-engineering internships at JPMorgan Chase in London and held engineering and technical leadership roles at companies including Edenlife and FoodBundles. Working across international banking, consumer technology and financial services shaped his focus on reliable software that can support real-world transactions at scale.
At JPMorgan, he worked on internal applications, including backend and frontend development. His later work across financial technology and consumer services widened his experience of how engineering choices affect the reliability of products used by businesses and individuals.
Building the technology behind VTMoney
Within FXKudi Group, Rotibi has combined engineering leadership with direct technical contributions to VTMoney. He was involved in designing backend services and application integrations for its banking operations and Banking-as-a-Service offering, helping connect customer-facing applications with the underlying financial infrastructure used by individuals and businesses.
His documented work on VTMoney also includes developing and maintaining APIs, integrating Redis for asynchronous processing, building mobile banking functionality with Flutter and writing tests. Those engineering responsibilities have accompanied his role leading a team working across mobile, frontend and backend products.
- “When Adedeji joined FXKudi Group in 2022, he brought more than technical leadership. He was directly involved in architecting and building our banking and payment technology, including the backend systems supporting VTMoney. As we expanded into Clozar, his engineering experience and ability to translate complex financial infrastructure into working products became an important part of our technology development,” said Tunji Abioye, Founder/CEO of FXKudi Group.
The group’s infrastructure includes banking capabilities in Nigeria and Ghana. Linking transactions across these markets means accounting for distinct currencies and local payment systems, while building processes that allow customers to transact across supported markets without having to manage every technical step themselves.
For merchants, the value of that infrastructure lies in the ability to pay suppliers and manage financial transactions between supported markets. Doing so depends on software that can coordinate account services, payment integrations and transaction records without exposing customers to each underlying banking relationship.
Why Clozar expanded beyond payments
In June 2024, FXKudi Group founded Clozar to extend its services into cross-border commerce and logistics. The thinking was that a successful payment is only part of a purchase: merchants still need to source goods, pay suppliers, arrange collection, manage shipping and track delivery—often through unrelated providers.
Clozar brings together these stages through its commerce, payments and logistics services. Customers and businesses can source and purchase goods across markets, use supported financial infrastructure to transact across currencies, and arrange delivery. The aim is a more connected process rather than a collection of disconnected services.
Consider a retailer purchasing inventory from a supplier in another West African country. The financial side of the order requires a way to settle the supplier; the physical side requires collection, international movement and delivery. Clozar is built around connecting those steps within one customer journey.
That integration is an engineering challenge as well as an operational one. Payment systems must communicate with orders and supplier transactions; logistics workflows must connect shipment information back to purchases. Rotibi’s responsibilities span across architecting backend systems, mobile applications, product integrations and leadership of the engineers building these services.
- “Payments, banking, commerce and logistics traditionally operate as independent systems. The technical problem we are solving is getting those systems to communicate well enough that the customer experiences them as one product,” Rotibi said.
Beyond the company
Rotibi has also contributed to the wider software-development community. At NITHUB, the University of Lagos technology innovation hub, he has supported mobile and backend developer education and mentoring. He has published open-source Flutter tools and has been invited to speak at developer and engineering-focused events, including Google Developer Student Clubs programmes. His public contributions sit alongside his work building commercial technology products.
Commercial traction and the next challenge
Clozar says that since its establishment it has facilitated approximately $2.7 million in cross-border trade, fulfilled more than 90,000 orders and served over 36,000 customers. These company-reported figures suggest demand for a service that connects financial transactions with product purchasing and delivery.
Scaling that model is not straightforward. Banking infrastructure differs between countries, foreign exchange can add cost, and logistics providers face delivery expenses and border-related operational challenges. Growth will depend on both dependable software integrations and effective financial and logistics partnerships.
- “The complexity should sit inside the infrastructure, not with the customer. A business owner should not have to understand settlement partners, FX conversion and banking rails just to pay someone in another African country,” Rotibi said.
For Rotibi, the longer-term opportunity is to make regional commerce easier to navigate: a merchant in Lagos should be able to purchase goods from Accra, pay through supported financial infrastructure and arrange delivery without independently coordinating each stage. The ambition reflects a broader direction in African fintech—connecting the movement of money with the trade that money makes possible.
