Grey has spent six years helping Africans get paid from abroad. Now it wants to become the place where payday begins.
What happened? Yesterday at Moonshot by TechCabal, Grey, the Y Combinator-backed cross-border payments company, launched Paycheck, a salary product for professionals earning in dollars, pounds and euros. Users can receive and organise salary payments, while qualifying customers get higher savings rates, larger transaction limits and priority support.
The launch comes as Grey crosses three million users and nearly $5 billion in processed payments. Its payment volume has also grown 170% year on year.
Explain like I’m new here: Grey did not start out trying to manage salaries. Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo launched the company in 2020 as Aboki Africa, helping Nigerians exchange foreign currency in domiciliary accounts. The founders soon realised receiving the money was itself a bigger problem. In 2021, they pivoted to virtual dollar, pound, and euro accounts for remote workers and freelancers. Grey joined Y Combinator in 2022 and raised a $2 million seed round later that year.
It had about 100,000 users in 2022 and crossed one million in 2024. Today, it operates across dozens of markets and is also pushing into business payments.
Between the lines: Receiving foreign payments is no longer enough of a moat. Grey competes with Raenest, Cleva, Afriex, and others offering versions of the same multi-currency account.
Paycheck changes the relationship. If a salary lands in Grey every month, the company gets the first chance to handle what happens next: saving, converting currencies, sending money, or paying bills. The customer also has one less reason to move that income immediately to another financial app.
Zoom out: Grey Business, launched in February, has already processed nearly $100 million. Now Paycheck is attacking the consumer side of the same problem.
Grey built its first growth phase around helping people receive money; Obong said it is targeting between 10 million and 20 million users. Getting to that milestone may depend on giving them reasons to leave the money there.