Nehikhare: 30% of Africa’s Trade Flows ‘ll Run on Our Rails in 10 Years

Multigate is a licensed treasury management and cross-border payments solution provider with operational offices in Canada, British Columbia, London, and Uganda, and licences in many  African countries. In this interview,  the company’s  Chief Executive Officer, Eghosa Nehikhare,  discusses  the firm’s  growth journey,  unique value proposition, and his vision for the future of cross-border payments.  Nume Ekeghe presents the excerpts:

Could you give us a background on Multigate, what you do, and the solution you are bringing to the ecosystem?
Multigate is a licensed treasury management and cross-border solutions provider, delivering far more than traditional payment services. For example, our platform enables a client to make a payment in naira while the beneficiary abroad receives USD(united States Dollars) or CNY(Chinese Yaun). We focus on the full spectrum of corporate financial operations.
 An example is one of our clients, with 30 subsidiaries across multiple countries and over 600 bank accounts, who previously had to log into each bank daily, download statements, and manually reconcile transactions — a time-consuming and inefficient process. With Multigate, corporates can view all global bank balances in one place, execute payments, reconcile statements, manage trade finance, and handle FX transactions, streamlining all financial operations through a single, unified interface. With our solution, reconciliation is automated, reporting is instant, and the client recently renewed their subscription for two more years. They are now asking us to build additional modules for trade finance, supply chain finance, and exposure management.

What makes Multigate stand out from other payment providers?
We provide services to corporates from a position of true value. Let me explain what that means. There is no company today that can go to any corporate in Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, or Mozambique and say, “Link all your bank accounts anywhere in the world to this platform.” With Multigate, they can log in, view all their account balances in real time, and aggregate statements from multiple banks — essentially combining all their internet banking solutions into one interface.
We also integrate directly into a company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Many businesses are moving towards ERP-based operations for enhanced financial management, where payment instructions go through the approval workflow, are sent directly to the chosen bank, and are reconciled automatically against the ERP.
No other company in Africa offers this exact solution. We give corporates real-time visibility of all their bank accounts worldwide on a single platform, fully integrated with their ERP systems. They can initiate FX conversions and make payments in their own name — not in Multigate’s name or that of a partner.
While others focus solely on cross-border payments, we automate the entire financial workflow, ensure robust security, and provide Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) with instant access to the data they need. Many CFOs cannot tell you their exact liquidity position across all banks in real time. Our clients can.

With the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) gaining traction, how do you see prospects for your solution?
In the near term, there is a lot of positive conversation happening, and this is prompting many banks and companies to express renewed interest. In the past, one of the biggest challenges was faced by airlines operating across Africa. They often had to manage revenues in local currencies, such as in Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, while simultaneously needing naira in Nigeria. Without a straightforward settlement mechanism, they would accumulate local currencies and use them to settle invoices, which was far from efficient.
Now, there’s growing momentum around trade agreements. Are they fully where we want them to be? Not yet. Interestingly, back in 2018, my team and I developed a white paper outlining what a Pan-African settlement platform could look like. When similar platforms began emerging later, many of their models mirrored the concepts we proposed. We intentionally waited for these platforms to gain commercial traction — meaning banks actively promoting them to customers across multiple markets — before deciding how to position ourselves. We are now seeing cross-border transactions spill over into other areas, which raises the question: should we compete directly with these platforms, or complement them? Our approach is to complement. We already work closely with most Nigerian banks, many of whom are our clients. Just last week, we held productive meetings with banks here in Nigeria that focused on collaboration.
We have our own SWIFT rails, and we can operate in parallel with banks, even acting as a backup. We believe the right strategy is to wait for banks to build demand in their respective countries and then step in to enable those transactions. The worst move would be to enter the market too early, create noise, and then watch someone else succeed two years later simply because the timing was right.

Will global economic shifts affect cross-border payments in Africa?
Yes, and we are already seeing the impact. Trading relationships between Africa and Asia, particularly with China and Singapore, are expanding rapidly. In the past, African importers often had to source dollars from the parallel market and wait up to a week for payments to reach suppliers in Asia. Today, we enable them to pay in local currency, with the supplier receiving their local currency within T+1 or even in real time. Demand for this service is rising quickly, and competition in the space is intensifying.

What is your approach to fostering innovation within Multigate, and how do digital treasury solutions play a role?
For us, innovation is never done in isolation from our clients or partners. We’ve been very deliberate about avoiding the trap of predicting what customers might want, only to build something that ends up unused.
Instead, our approach starts with understanding how critical a request is to the client.
Our product team has even designed a prioritisation process based on the Fibonacci sequence. For example, if I approach the team with a proposed functionality, they use a structured template to evaluate it.
The first question is always: has a client requested it? Then they assess its commercial value and other key factors. These are scored using a formula, and the request with the highest score takes priority. It’s a transparent, data-driven process. Once a request is prioritised, the product manager engages directly with the client not to push a prebuilt idea, but to understand the challenge from their perspective and work backwards to create the right solution.

Aside from client satisfaction, what motivates you?
Being  the go-to partner for value creation. If a client calls me at 7.00 a.m. with a challenge, my first response is always, “Yes,” and then I figure out how to deliver. Outside work, I’m in the gym or boxing from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m. daily. I also take French classes twice a week to better position us for opportunities in Francophone Africa. Weekends are for family, client visits, and relationship-building.
What’s next for Multigate in terms of new markets, partnerships, or product innovation, and if you could fast-forward 10 years, what achievements would make you proudest as CEO?
We have just obtained our Connected Bank Identifier Code (BIC), the same type used by banks, which is a powerful milestone for us. We’re now in advanced talks with partner banks to act as our correspondent banks in multiple markets. Once live, this will enable us to launch a range of solutions, including trade finance automation.
Trade finance automation is particularly exciting because we’re approaching cross-border payments from a real local currency perspective for banks. This means we can enable a bank’s customer to send funds that are received directly in the beneficiary’s local currency, such as Kenyan shillings in Kenya, through SWIFT.
Looking ahead, we are focused on building these local currency rails in partnership with banks. If I fast-forward 10 years, one achievement that would make me proudest is for 30 per cent of Africa’s trade flows, whether from banks, corporates, or SMEs, to run on our rails. That’s our vision: three out of every 10 trade transactions on the continent will be facilitated by Multigate.

Are you planning to move to other markets and set up shops in other countries across Africa?
Yes. Currently, we are working on our South African licence and also in Francophone Africa, covering both West and Central African regions. That is phase one. In phase two, we will be looking at the Northern African region.
Also, we have an office in Canada, in British Columbia, which is a licensed entity, and we hold many African licenses there. We also have in London. We have here in Lagos, Nigeria. We also have in Uganda, because we are licensed in Uganda, and then all the other markets. We work through banking partnerships, which are approved by the regulators.

How do you engage with regulators?
We have been in this space long enough to know that doing business in Africa is a highly regulated environment. The system is strong, and you can’t have a “Chinese wall” between regulation and the private sector — it simply doesn’t work. For us, maintaining a close relationship with central banks is critical. In every African country where we operate, we ensure we either obtain a licence or secure a “no objection” approval from the central bank before commencing operations. We work hand-in-hand with local banks and fintechs because we understand that if you don’t engage with the regulator from the start, it’s only a matter of time before they step in with sanctions, regardless of who you are.
We’ve seen this happen to much larger banks and fintechs. That’s why our approach is consistent across all countries. For example, just recently, after a meeting here, one of the largest maintenance companies asked if we could start operations in South Africa. I made it clear that until our license there is approved, we won’t proceed — though we are already in the process of securing it.
Importantly, regulatory compliance isn’t just about holding a license. It’s about understanding the permissible activities within each country’s local framework: transaction limits, documentary requirements, reporting frequency, and even the specific training materials you need to submit. Each market has its own rules. Our operations team submits between 13 and 30 reports daily to various regulators across the continent. This is a significant commitment, but for us, it’s non-negotiable. We simply can’t afford to be caught off guard.