New Fintech Connects African, Latin American Startups to Business Banking
Quick Reads:
- Bullion, founded by Atlanta entrepreneur Joshua Afolabi, targets the business banking gap facing African and Latin American startups.
- The platform offers business accounts, corporate cards, and multi-currency vendor payment tools on one dashboard.
- Bullion runs on Stripe Treasury and Stripe Issuing, with stablecoin rails for faster cross-border settlement.
- The launch follows Mercury’s 2024 decision to shut down accounts for founders in 13 African countries.
Raising venture capital in U.S. dollars used to be the easy part for international tech founders. The real trouble began once that money landed in the bank, and that’s exactly the business banking gap that Atlanta’s newest fintech, Bullion, wants to close.
Founded by Atlanta entrepreneur Joshua Afolabi, Bullion is building financial infrastructure for startups operating across Africa and Latin America, regions where founders often juggle multiple financial tools just to keep the lights on. Afolabi, who is launching his second startup, saw the problem up close: managing treasury, payroll, vendor payments, and daily operations across different currencies and regions typically means stitching together a patchwork of banking apps that don’t talk to each other.
Bullion’s answer is a single platform where founders can open business accounts, issue corporate cards, and pay vendors in multiple markets without switching between separate currencies and separate providers. For startups scaling globally, that means less time managing money and more time actually building.
The business banking gap Bullion is addressing isn’t hypothetical. In 2024, U.S.-based Mercury shut down accounts for founders in 13 African countries, a move that rattled the continent’s tech ecosystem and left many legitimate businesses scrambling for alternatives. Bullion was built, in part, as a hedge against exactly that kind of disruption — giving founders confidence they won’t wake up one day locked out of their own banking system.
To power its cross-border features, Bullion has partnered with fintech giant Stripe. Using Stripe Treasury and Stripe Issuing, the platform gives startups access to USD accounts, physical and virtual card issuance, spend management, and cross-border fund transfers, all from one place. Behind the scenes, Bullion also taps modern payment infrastructure, including stablecoin rails, to speed up settlement and cut down on friction in international transactions.
“With Stripe powering key parts of the US and UK financial infrastructure layer, Bullion is building a more unified financial experience that helps founders hold, manage, and operate across currencies and borders from a single platform,” Afolabi said.
As Atlanta continues cementing its reputation as a fintech hub, Bullion’s entry signals a growing focus on solving banking problems that stretch well beyond U.S. borders, closing the business banking gap that has long made global expansion harder than it needs to be for African and Latin American founders.
