Carbon Nigeria (OneFi)

Carbon Nigeria, formerly known as Paylater and operated by OneFi, is a Nigerian digital financial services company founded in 2012 by Chijioke Dozie and Ngozi Dozie. It began as a consumer lending platform and later evolved into a broader fintech offering that includes instant loans, payments, savings, and investment products.

The company’s original product, Paylater, focused on fast, data-driven lending for underserved consumers, especially people with limited access to traditional credit. As the business matured, OneFi rebranded the platform as Carbon to reflect its shift from a single loan product into a full digital banking experience. That rebrand marked a clear change in identity: from a lending startup to a wider financial services platform.

Carbon’s public positioning emphasizes convenience, access, and financial inclusion. The company says it helps users manage money through credit, simple payments, high-yield investments, and personal finance tools, while operating from Lagos with activities in Nigeria and Ghana. Its growth also helped establish it as one of the better-known names in Nigeria’s fintech sector, especially among mobile-first users.

In structural terms, OneFi is the parent company and Carbon is the consumer-facing brand. That makes the company profile slightly different from a conventional single-brand startup: OneFi represents the corporate entity, while Carbon represents the product ecosystem most users interact with. The business has also been framed as a pioneer in using technology and data scoring to expand access to credit in Nigeria.