Stripe Alum Launches Platform to Help African Diaspora Invest Locally

Image Credits: Borderless

When Joe Kinvi took on the role of head of finance at Touchtech Payments in 2017, the startup could not afford his full salary. To bridge the gap, Kinvi negotiated for stock options. This decision proved pivotal—18 months later, Stripe acquired Touchtech, converting Kinvi’s equity into Stripe shares. These shares enabled him to leave his job and eventually pursue a new entrepreneurial path.

Uniting the African Diaspora: The Birth of Borderless

Kinvi's next venture, Borderless, aims to empower Africans living abroad to invest collectively in startups and real estate back home. Since its beta launch in the UK, the platform has processed more than $500,000 in transactions. Borderless focuses on enabling group investing by diaspora communities, unlocking new channels for capital flow into Africa.

“The diaspora sends billions of dollars in remittances, but very little transforms into productive investments,” Kinvi explained. “If we can connect the right groups to the right assets, investing at scale becomes much easier for everyone.”

Early Challenges Spark Innovation

The idea for Borderless sprang from Kinvi’s experience during the pandemic when he and his friends created an investment club, Hoaq, to pool funds from local and diaspora angels into African startups. Establishing this club wasn’t simple. Traditional banks flagged transactions, accounts were frozen, and complexities around regulations, currency conversions, and investor accreditation made the process cumbersome.

To address these hurdles, Hoaq hired legal help and started automating its processes. Over time, this operational experience inspired Kinvi to create a scalable, software-driven solution. Hoaq has invested in notable African startups such as LemFi, Bamboo, and Chowdeck.

From Prototype to Platform

After transitioning from Stripe to a growth role and spending time at Paystack (another Stripe-acquired company), Kinvi returned to address the inefficiencies he’d encountered. He built internal tools for onboarding and capital disbursement, which soon attracted attention from other investment collectives. What began as a private fix became a product for the diaspora at large.

Today, Borderless serves as the backend for over 100 collective groups on its waitlist, automating member onboarding, regulatory compliance, cross-border payments, and capital deployment for a range of asset types—including startups and real estate. In recent months, current users have backed more than ten startup deals and two property projects in Kenya, with minimum investments set at $1,000 for startups and $5,000 for real estate.

Establishing Trust and Safeguarding Investments

A key challenge faced by diaspora investors is the lack of trust—many have lost funds when sending money home through informal channels. As Kinvi shares, “Someone I know sent €200,000 home to build a house. It was never built.” Borderless tackles this by routing investments directly to verified recipients and escrow accounts, bypassing collective managers, while embedding thorough legal and compliance checks throughout the process.

Operating from the UK allows Borderless to promote deals compliantly to diaspora investors under established regulatory frameworks. The company’s revenue model combines transaction fees, membership dues, and foreign exchange spreads, with plans to potentially offer additional remittance and asset management products in the future.

Unlocking New Markets and Funding Sources

The broader opportunity lies in mobilizing the estimated $30 billion in annual savings held by African migrants. While money transfer companies like Zepz, Taptap Send, LemFi, and NALA dominate the remittance market, few have built platforms for long-term group investing. Borderless’s focus on collective action and secure infrastructure fills this gap.

The startup already counts notable investors and industry leaders among its backers, including DFS Lab, Ezra Olubi (Paystack CTO), Olumide Soyombo, and executives from Stripe and Google—many of whom are active users themselves.

Scaling Challenges Ahead

As Borderless begins to scale, it faces challenges familiar to many fintech platforms: building robust identity verification, fraud detection, and legal workflows that secure trust as the user base expands. Today, its strongest filter is a network of trusted collective leaders, but future growth will require scalable solutions to retain safety and compliance.

DeepFounder AI Analysis

Why it matters

This development signals a shift in how diaspora communities leverage technology to meaningfully participate in their home regions’ economic growth. Startups like Borderless create a more structured and trustworthy path for cross-border investment, moving beyond simple remittances toward sustainable asset building and wealth creation. This trend could foster more regional startups and real estate projects, directly fueled by global diaspora capital.

Risks & opportunities

On the risk side, platforms facilitating investment across borders face regulatory complexity, potential fraud, and the challenge of ensuring transparency and due diligence at scale. However, the opportunity is equally sizable: mobilizing idle diaspora savings into productive sectors could unlock significant new capital for emerging markets. Historical parallels include the development of platforms such as AngelList for US-based syndicates or NRE/NRO banking solutions for Indian diaspora investors.

Startup idea or application

Inspired by Borderless, a founder might consider developing a modular platform focused specifically on enabling diaspora groups to invest not only in startups and real estate but also in infrastructure bonds, local education funds, or creative ventures (like film or digital media projects). Features could include automated legal compliance, social trust scoring, and transparent reporting dashboards for group members—positioning the platform as the go-to trust layer for cross-border collective investing.

Diaspora Investing African Startups Fintech Collective Investment

Visit DeepFounder AI to learn how to start your own startup, validate your idea, and build it from scratch.

📚 Read more articles in our DeepFounder AI blog.