When Wale Akanbi, a former CTO and co-founder of Aella, a Nigerian financial and credit solutions provider, relocated to the UK in 2021, he struggled to access financial services because his credit history did not transfer with him.
“I had to borrow a card from one of my friends just to be able to spend,” Akanbi recalls.
His experience reflects a wider problem for immigrants: credit histories rarely travel across borders. Once in a new country, migrants are presented with a clean financial slate as it were, so they’re unable to access credit cards and other services that rely on credit history.
Bleyt, founded by Akanbi in 2025, wants to change that. The company has built a money app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to pull financial data from local credit providers and bureaus, allowing immigrants to carry their credit histories across borders. It also offers a multi-currency account and card to reduce the delays immigrants face in accessing financial services in new countries.
Over the years, several fintechs have tackled remittances and cross-border payments, but access to credit remains hard for many immigrants. It is estimated that nearly 300 million immigrants worldwide move to countries where their credit histories become invisible, according to Tata Consultancy Services.
“Fintechs that offer remittance services like Lemfi, Nala, Taptap Send, and others, most of them offer a one-way remittance product, but they don’t offer credit portability,” Akanbi said.
While Bleyt offers a multi-currency account and card, its AI profiles customers’ creditworthiness for banks, credit providers, and other financial institutions in their new countries. The model aggregates financial records and alternative data, including their previous credit histories, into a portable credit score.
How it works
Bleyt asks users for permission to pull financial data from multiple sources, such as credit providers and credit bureaus, then synthesises it into a transparent credit score. It also predicts what the score would mean for migrants in their new countries.
It is partnering with credit providers in its coverage markets to translate the score into their local systems and extend credit to customers. The company did not disclose its partners, citing its pre-launch stage.
“We have lending partners and credit providers in the new countries that we can port your credit history or score to, and they are happy to take it on and then profile you within their own system and give you a good rate and good limits almost as you are,” Akanbi shared.
The model, now about 98% complete and currently in closed beta testing, will launch in October and support 20 countries it considers with high migration flows in North America, including the U.S. and Canada, the U.K., and some in Europe, while also planning to scale to other countries in the future.
Bleyt’s Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks involve filling out personal and ID information, and being passed through fraud-detection models. The company also gives customers control over their data, including the option to request deletion while complying with data-protection laws in its coverage markets.
Bleyt considers Monzo, Wise, and Lemfi as competitors. “Most of those fintech providers are our competitors, but they don’t combine their financial services with credit portability, which is very important to users.”
It plans to earn from three streams: transaction fees on cards and transfers, subscriptions for credit portability, and revenue-sharing with lending partners. A B2B line is also on the horizon. “We make revenue share from the lending partners that provide lending for our customers. And we also see a path to a B2B revenue stream.”
Akanbi said navigating regulation across its target markets has been a major challenge, adding that building a platform that reports credit histories for immigrants requires licences and partnerships with multiple credit providers and bureaus.
“While we are working on securing some licences in different jurisdictions, we’ve been able to get a Money Services Business (MSB) licence in Canada, and through partnerships, we were able to operate in some other countries,” Akanbi stated.
It is also working to secure licences for additional services. “We also have to get the licences to make sure that gives us the ability to do both additional and crypto-related services.”
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