Verto’s new Atlas APIs aim to fix the headache of cross-border payments in Africa

Anyone who’s tried to build a digital business that operates across multiple African countries knows the pain: a tangled mess of different regulations, volatile currencies, and fragmented banking systems. Payments platform Verto thinks it has the solution with its new suite of API-first tools, called Atlas, designed to let other companies embed global financial services directly into their own products.

Africa’s booming digital economy has long been hamstrung by financial infrastructure that hasn’t kept pace. For fintechs, marketplaces, or even a travel-tech company, trying to manage payments across borders often means navigating a labyrinth of local licensing, unpredictable FX rates, and a lack of access to local banking services. It’s a huge operational drag that can stifle growth before it even begins.

Verto’s Atlas Suite, announced Thursday, is designed to bulldoze those barriers. The platform offers a single API integration that plugs businesses into Verto’s existing infrastructure for banking, foreign exchange (FX), and payments, effectively outsourcing the complexity.

“We have witnessed the hurdles businesses face in scaling operations across borders, especially in African markets,” said Ola Oyetayo, Verto’s CEO and co-founder, in a statement. “Atlas is a transformative solution built to eliminate these challenges and accelerate growth.”

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So what’s actually in the box? Verto is breaking Atlas down into a few key offerings:

• Atlas for Fintechs: This is for the neobanks and other financial apps that want to offer multi-currency accounts and international payments without building the entire back end or securing licenses in dozens of markets. They can use the API to offer virtual accounts in over 12 African markets and execute payments to over 100 countries.
• Atlas for Platforms: Aimed at non-financial businesses like e-commerce marketplaces or logistics platforms, this allows them to embed payment and FX tools directly into their user experience. A marketplace, for example, could manage payouts to sellers in different countries without ever sending users to an external site.
• White Label Broker Services: For companies that want to offer a fully branded cross-border payments service, Verto is providing an end-to-end solution they can customize and control pricing on, creating a new revenue stream with minimal overhead.

This isn’t just theoretical. Kenyan travel-tech company Triply, which provides software for travel businesses, is an early adopter. Instead of building its own complex multi-currency payment system from scratch, Triply is integrating Atlas to offer embedded payment solutions to its clients across the continent. According to Verto, this allows them to speed up transactions and cut costs while staying compliant.

The suite also includes features essential for operating in many African markets, like local collection accounts, treasury management tools, and last-mile payouts directly to bank accounts or, crucially, mobile money wallets. This makes it useful for everything from managing payroll to processing remittances in bulk.

With the launch of Atlas, Verto is making a clear play to become the underlying infrastructure—the Stripe or Plaid, if you will—for a new generation of African digital businesses looking to go global. By abstracting away the immense complexity of cross-border finance, the company is betting it can unlock the next wave of growth for the continent’s vibrant tech ecosystem.