BucksTrybe Is Indigenous Initiative To Enhance Credit To Emerging Businesses In Nigeria – Akande

After detailed research, a Nigerian entrepreneur, Mr Tope Akande, has built an alternative international financial data service for Nigerians with BucksTrybe. He spoke with CHIKA IZUORA

Can you tell us how you came about this initiative?

For millions of Nigerians, access to credit remains out of reach. Traditional credit scoring systems rely heavily on formal banking history, leaving out a large population that earns, saves, and transacts outside structured financial institutions.  So I decided to take a different path with BucksTrybe, a platform that turns everyday financial behaviour into credible financial data.

At the centre of BucksTrybe’s model is the digitisation of long-standing group savings practices trusted across communities, such as the ‘Ajo’ system amongst the Yorubas, ‘Esusu’ system among the Igbos and ‘Adashe’ among the Hausas.

The platform records contributions, tracks progress and introduces approval structures that reduce disputes and the likelihood of fraud. This creates a reliable financial trail for users who previously had none, while also helping groups stay organised and accountable. It is not just about the convenience of use, but clarity, a shared view of contributions and obligations that make participation easier, reduce misunderstanding, and strengthen commitment within the group.

Informal finance already holds the signals needed for credit assessment. People have always saved in groups. What has been missing is a structured way to prove that consistency and discipline,” he said. “We are capturing those behaviours and turning them into data that financial institutions can trust.

So my team and I are taking steps to replicate this financial solution in the United Kingdom, where BucksTrybe is building tools aimed at helping users build credit visibility. This is done by turning verified patterns of financial behaviour into structured signals that can support quicker access to credit, making millions of individuals who are financially invisible visible.

Our goal is simple. Credit should reflect real behaviour, not just formal history. If someone has shown consistency over time, the system should have a fair way to recognise that,” Akande said. “If you have shown discipline over time, that should open doors, not close them.

This move reflects a broader ambition to make financial identity and credit profile accessible to all. BucksTrybe’s work sits at the intersection of community finance and modern credit systems: strengthening everyday saving culture in Nigeria through transparency, while building credit visibility pathways in the UK for people who are often excluded by traditional scoring models.

This approach positions BucksTrybe as more than a savings tool.  It is building an alternative financial data system that reflects how many individuals can prove their credibility. For many users, it is simply about getting recognised for what they already do. A consistent savings habit that once stayed within a small circle can now speak for itself, opening up access to opportunities that were previously out of reach.

So what do we expect from this innovation?

I am building BucksTrybe to solve a system problem: when good people are excluded because the system doesn’t understand their financial reality,” Akande said. “We are not replacing the culture. We are strengthening it with structure and visibility.”

Tell us more about this?

BucksTrybe is a fintech building tools that strengthen trust in everyday finance. In Nigeria, BucksTrybe supports group savings and contribution structures with visibility and accountability. In the UK, BucksTrybe focuses on credit visibility, helping people build credibility through verified financial behaviour.

What inspired your journey into this project, and how has it shaped your approach, particularly in landmark projects?

My inspiration came from seeing the hardworking, disciplined, financially responsible people around me being turned away by systems that simply did not understand them. They were saving consistently, contributing to their communities, and honouring their financial commitments. But because none of that was formalised in a way that traditional credit systems could read, they were invisible. That upset me.

This shaped everything about how I approach BucksTrybe. From the beginning, I was clear that we were not building a product for the already-included. We were building infrastructure for people that the system had failed to see. So when we launched the Ajo and Communal Savings features, for example, that was not just a product milestone; it was a landmark moment because it meant that for the first time, a contribution made within a trusted community group could generate a verifiable financial trail. That is a fundamental shift.

How did you get the vision for this?

My background in banking and financial services at Stanbic IBTC and later at Barclays gave me an inside view of how credit decisions are made. And the more I understood the system, the more I could see exactly where it was breaking down for ordinary people. The data it relied on is quite narrow. It rewarded people who had already been included and penalised those who had not, regardless of their actual financial behaviour.

I kept asking myself: what if the data existed, but just in a different form? What if the discipline someone showed in their Ajo group, or the consistency of their contributions over the years, could be captured and made legible to financial institutions? That question would not leave me alone. Eventually, I stopped waiting for someone else to answer it and decided to build the answer myself. That is what BucksTrybe is. It is the last piece to complete and make the financial puzzle meaningful.

What is your take on the Nigerian fintech industry?

Nigeria’s fintech industry is one of the most exciting and consequential in the world right now. The energy, the talent, the appetite for solving real problems is remarkable. And what makes it especially powerful is that the problems being solved are not abstract. They affect millions of people’s daily lives. Access to credit. Access to savings tools. Financial identity. These are not luxury problems. They are fundamental.

However, I believe there is still a gap between the innovation happening at the product level and the structural change needed at the system level. A lot of fintech activity has focused on payments and transfers, which is important, but the deeper challenge of financial inclusion, of bringing the credit-invisible into a system that recognises their worth, that work is still very much in progress. That is the space BucksTrybe operates in, and I believe it is where some of the most important fintech work of the next decade will take place. Nigeria is not just a market for these solutions.

It is a laboratory for ideas that can travel. What we are building here has direct application in the UK and beyond, because the problem of financial invisibility is not unique to Nigeria. It is global.

 Could you share some of the challenges you have faced as an entrepreneur and how you navigated them?

Trust is the hardest thing to build and the easiest to lose, and in financial services, it is everything. When you ask people to bring their savings, their contribution groups, and their informal financial lives onto a platform they have never heard of, you are asking for an enormous amount of trust. That was our biggest early challenge. People had been managing their Ajo groups through WhatsApp and word of mouth for years. Why would they hand that to an app?

We navigated it by being relentlessly transparent. We did not overpromise. We showed people exactly how the platform worked, what happened to their data, and how contributions were tracked and verified. We listened more than we spoke. And we let the product prove itself through the communities that adopted it early.

The other major challenge has been operating across two very different markets, Nigeria and the UK, simultaneously. The regulatory environments, user behaviours, and infrastructure are different. There were moments when I had to resist the temptation to move faster than our foundations could support. Building across borders requires patience that may not come naturally when you see the urgency of the problem you are solving.

What advice would you give to those who are aspiring to become successful entrepreneurs in your business?

Could you start with the problem, not the product? I see too many aspiring founders fall in love with their solution before they have fully understood the problem they are trying to solve. That was me at the early stages. If your understanding of the problem is shallow, your product will be shallow too. Go deep. Talk to the people you want to serve. Understand not just what they need, but also why the existing system has failed to provide it.

Second, do not underestimate the cultural dimension of what you are building. BucksTrybe works because it respects a financial culture that has existed for generations. We did not tell communities that their way of saving was wrong. We said: your way of saving is right, and we want to give it the structure and visibility it deserves. That posture of strengthening rather than replacing has been central to everything. If you want to build something that lasts, build with people, not just for them.

Finally, be honest about what you do not know. Surround yourself with people whose strengths cover your gaps. There is no version of building a company where one person has all the answers. The founders who last are the ones who stay curious, stay humble, and keep asking better questions.