Voye Launches App to Formalise How Diaspora Communities Exchange Money

• The new remittance platform opens corridors from the UK and Canada to Nigeria and Kenya, while introducing a structured P2P Community to bring peer-to-peer currency exchange out of the informal economy

There is a version of the global remittance story that the headline numbers do not tell. In 2024, remittances to Nigeria alone reached nearly $20 billion. Africa pulled in close to $100 billion.

These are figures that get cited in policy documents and fintech pitch decks, but they represent only the portion of money movement that formal systems can see. Beneath them, running quietly and efficiently through community networks across the UK, Canada, and beyond, is a parallel economy of peer-to-peer currency exchange that has been moving value between diaspora communities and their home countries for decades without ever appearing in a regulator’s data set.

There is a version of the global remittance story that the headline numbers do not tell. In 2024, remittances to Nigeria alone reached nearly $20 billion. Africa pulled in close to $100 billion. These are figures that get cited in policy documents and fintech pitch decks, but they represent only the portion of money movement that formal systems can see. Beneath them, running quietly and efficiently through community networks across the UK, Canada, and beyond, is a parallel economy of peer-to-peer currency exchange that has been moving value between diaspora communities and their home countries for decades without ever appearing in a regulator’s data set.

The informal peer-to-peer market has worked because the people in it trusted each other. Our job was never to replace that trust. It was to build a structure around it that protects everyone involved and makes it visible to the systems that have ignored it for too long.

– Akin Afolabi, Co-Founder & CEO, Voye

The remittance side of the platform is straightforward by design. Users in the UK and Canada can download Voye, complete a secure sign-up, fund a multi-currency wallet, and send money to Nigeria and Kenya quickly and without hidden fees. The wallet supports NGN, KES, GBP, CAD, and additional currencies held within a single dashboard. The product has been built around the reality that for many diaspora users, sending money home is not an occasional act but a regular, non-negotiable financial responsibility – and that every friction point, every unexplained fee, and every delayed transfer carries a real cost that extends beyond the money itself.

The more structurally significant part of the launch, however, is the P2P Community. Voye is introducing a dedicated feature within the app where users can exchange currencies they hold for the ones they need, directly with other verified members of the community. Two people with complementary needs – one holding GBP who wants NGN, another holding NGN who wants GBP – can find each other, agree on a rate, and complete a protected exchange without a financial institution sitting in the middle taking a margin. The P2P Community is currently live for users in the UK and Canada, with more corridors planned as the platform grows.

The reason this has not been done before, or at least not done formally, speaks to something important about how the remittance industry has been built. Traditional platforms are structured around control – money moves through them, and they earn from that movement at every stage. A peer-to-peer model, by contrast, earns its value from connection rather than transit. The rate belongs to the people exchanging. The platform’s role is to create the match, protect the transaction, and ensure that what was agreed upon is what happens. That is a fundamentally different relationship between a platform and its users, and it is one that many established players have been slow to embrace precisely because it requires them to give up the margin they have been accustomed to extracting.

Voye’s argument is that this reluctance has had a cost, and that cost has been borne entirely by the communities the industry claims to serve. With no formal infrastructure around peer-to-peer exchange, the informal market has continued to operate without protections, without standardisation, and without the kind of regulatory visibility that would allow it to be counted, monitored, or improved. People have been exchanging through WhatsApp groups, word-of-mouth networks, and community arrangements that work until they don’t – and when something goes wrong, there is no system to appeal to, no record that the exchange took place, and no recourse. Voye is the answer to that structural failure.

We are not asking people to change how they think about money or community – that thinking is already right. We are asking them to do what they have always done, but inside a structure that keeps them safe and creates a record that the financial system can finally read.

– Damilare Eniayewu, CTO, Voye

Voye is powered by Cede, a financial infrastructure company with capabilities across global payments and settlement, treasury-as-a-service, risk and exposure management, and working capital and trade finance. The platform is live on iOS and Android. The company has stated that expansion to further corridors and currency pairs is in development, driven by community growth and regulatory engagement in each market. Everything Voye is building runs on a single conviction: that money should mean more – more value, more protection, more fairness, and more dignity for the people moving it.

• The new remittance platform opens corridors from the UK and Canada to Nigeria and Kenya, while introducing a structured P2P Community to bring peer-to-peer currency exchange out of the informal economy

There is a version of the global remittance story that the headline numbers do not tell. In 2024, remittances to Nigeria alone reached nearly $20 billion. Africa pulled in close to $100 billion.

These are figures that get cited in policy documents and fintech pitch decks, but they represent only the portion of money movement that formal systems can see. Beneath them, running quietly and efficiently through community networks across the UK, Canada, and beyond, is a parallel economy of peer-to-peer currency exchange that has been moving value between diaspora communities and their home countries for decades without ever appearing in a regulator’s data set.

There is a version of the global remittance story that the headline numbers do not tell. In 2024, remittances to Nigeria alone reached nearly $20 billion. Africa pulled in close to $100 billion. These are figures that get cited in policy documents and fintech pitch decks, but they represent only the portion of money movement that formal systems can see. Beneath them, running quietly and efficiently through community networks across the UK, Canada, and beyond, is a parallel economy of peer-to-peer currency exchange that has been moving value between diaspora communities and their home countries for decades without ever appearing in a regulator’s data set.

The informal peer-to-peer market has worked because the people in it trusted each other. Our job was never to replace that trust. It was to build a structure around it that protects everyone involved and makes it visible to the systems that have ignored it for too long.

– Akin Afolabi, Co-Founder & CEO, Voye

The remittance side of the platform is straightforward by design. Users in the UK and Canada can download Voye, complete a secure sign-up, fund a multi-currency wallet, and send money to Nigeria and Kenya quickly and without hidden fees. The wallet supports NGN, KES, GBP, CAD, and additional currencies held within a single dashboard. The product has been built around the reality that for many diaspora users, sending money home is not an occasional act but a regular, non-negotiable financial responsibility – and that every friction point, every unexplained fee, and every delayed transfer carries a real cost that extends beyond the money itself.

The more structurally significant part of the launch, however, is the P2P Community. Voye is introducing a dedicated feature within the app where users can exchange currencies they hold for the ones they need, directly with other verified members of the community. Two people with complementary needs – one holding GBP who wants NGN, another holding NGN who wants GBP – can find each other, agree on a rate, and complete a protected exchange without a financial institution sitting in the middle taking a margin. The P2P Community is currently live for users in the UK and Canada, with more corridors planned as the platform grows.

The reason this has not been done before, or at least not done formally, speaks to something important about how the remittance industry has been built. Traditional platforms are structured around control – money moves through them, and they earn from that movement at every stage. A peer-to-peer model, by contrast, earns its value from connection rather than transit. The rate belongs to the people exchanging. The platform’s role is to create the match, protect the transaction, and ensure that what was agreed upon is what happens. That is a fundamentally different relationship between a platform and its users, and it is one that many established players have been slow to embrace precisely because it requires them to give up the margin they have been accustomed to extracting.

Voye’s argument is that this reluctance has had a cost, and that cost has been borne entirely by the communities the industry claims to serve. With no formal infrastructure around peer-to-peer exchange, the informal market has continued to operate without protections, without standardisation, and without the kind of regulatory visibility that would allow it to be counted, monitored, or improved. People have been exchanging through WhatsApp groups, word-of-mouth networks, and community arrangements that work until they don’t – and when something goes wrong, there is no system to appeal to, no record that the exchange took place, and no recourse. Voye is the answer to that structural failure.

We are not asking people to change how they think about money or community – that thinking is already right. We are asking them to do what they have always done, but inside a structure that keeps them safe and creates a record that the financial system can finally read.

– Damilare Eniayewu, CTO, Voye

Voye is powered by Cede, a financial infrastructure company with capabilities across global payments and settlement, treasury-as-a-service, risk and exposure management, and working capital and trade finance. The platform is live on iOS and Android. The company has stated that expansion to further corridors and currency pairs is in development, driven by community growth and regulatory engagement in each market. Everything Voye is building runs on a single conviction: that money should mean more – more value, more protection, more fairness, and more dignity for the people moving it.