This article looks at how Clea handles cross-border payments in car-importation, a process in which anyone bringing in cars from abroad faces two tasks: locating the right vehicle, then paying an auction house that may be based in another country.
Sheriff Adedokun, a founder of several businesses and creator of Clea, a platform that handles cross-border payments for African firms, found the second task much harder than he expected.
Moving money across African borders had long been messy. Companies that traded abroad generally leaned on banks or similar financial intermediaries to shift funds between markets.
When Adedokun began bringing in cars from the United States in 2022, Nigerian fintechs were already working on tools to simplify international payments, yet the choices on offer did not always suit the kind of transactions he had to make.
"I attempted many Nigerian fintech platforms, but they failed me because the majority of my payments were turned down," Adedokun said in an interview with TechCabal. "Then I had to go to the bank, fill a form, and try to do the transfer. There was also a limit on sending international transfers from Nigerian banks."
According to him, American car auction platforms insisted that the money come straight from the individual or company buying the vehicle, since a transfer made by a third party might be turned down.
Importing cars was only one example of many for firms that have to pay their suppliers before goods can be shipped. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that total imports exceeded ₦15 billion ($11.1 million) in Q1 of 2025.
Autoclear was set up by Adedokun in 2024 to help customers find vehicles and pay American auction marketplaces for them. Dealing with importers showed him a wider problem: they were also in debt to freight brokers, forwarding agents and carriers.
Every one of those parties took payment in its own manner, and no connection existed between any of them and the venues where the cars were purchased.
He therefore joined forces with Sidney Egwuatu, a friend of many years, and the pair created Clea, a payments service that lets African firms buy goods from abroad and pay for them across borders. The product was built quietly, away from public view, and went on public release in December 2025.
Also Read: Bimbo Ademoye consistency pays off in millions of views
What happens to money on Clea
What happens to money on Clea
On Clea, a company can manage all the payments it owes to suppliers abroad from a single dashboard. Once it has registered and been verified, the business does the following:
- Puts naira into the platform from its Nigerian bank account
- Converts the naira into whichever currency is required
- Adds its foreign supplier as a payee
In a live demonstration, Adedokun showed the platform handling the US dollar, British pound, euro and Chinese yuan, among other currencies.
To set up a new supplier, the customer must supply the recipient's address and country, along with a description of how the customer and the beneficiary are connected. After the payee is saved, the customer starts a payment through any of the routes open for that country.
According to Adedokun, a payment bound for the United States could travel via ACH, Fedwire or the Real-Time Payments (RTP) system, while other countries could be reached via SWIFT.
Clea relies on stablecoins to carry value between the stages of a payment. Adedokun explained that the platform hides this machinery from users, who only need to top up in naira and make sure the supplier gets the foreign currency that was agreed.
Customers may alternatively load their dollar wallets straight from stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, using the blockchain networks Clea supports.
Stablecoins are gaining ground throughout the African continent, both for sending money home and for settling commercial transactions between countries. Flutterwave, the Nigerian payments infrastructure firm, has started looking into ways of building USDC into the systems it uses to settle payments.
In February, Onafriq teamed up with Conduit, enabling USDC to be used for transfers across borders and for paying its partners overseas.
“Stablecoins are also part of our settlement infrastructure,” Adedokun explained. “They allow value to move efficiently between parts of the payment stack, but our customers don’t need to understand stablecoins or interact with crypto. They simply know that they were funded in naira and their supplier received dollars, pounds, euros or yuan.”
Clea introduced a Vendor Payments tool in August, designed for companies that repeatedly settle bills with the same suppliers abroad. Adedokun said it emerged from observing how businesses really used the platform, which sharpened the firm's sense of what clients require.
Why Clea is backing importers
Its customers include wholesale traders, makers of goods, dealers in electronics, fashion brands, importers of machinery and African companies that depend on suppliers overseas.
“Initially, we thought speed and FX access were the biggest problems,” he said. “ They are still very important, but once customers started using Clea repeatedly, we realised that trust, payment identity, reconciliation and supplier management are equally important.”
With Vendor Payments, the customer selects a vendor from a preset directory, and the platform keeps each vendor's banking details current. Even so, ahead of authorising a transfer, the customer must enter whatever identifier that supplier requires for the specific transaction, such as a lot or buyer ID.
Adedokun said the feature handles US-dollar transfers to chosen suppliers based in the United States, among them the car auction marketplaces Copart and IAA.
“If thousands of importers are paying the same shippers, auction companies and suppliers, it doesn’t make sense for every importer to establish that relationship independently every time,” he said. “Once the vendor already exists on Clea, we can simplify the transaction for both sides: fewer incorrect account details, faster reconciliation, better visibility and potentially much faster settlement.”
Why Clea is backing importers
Clea earns most of its revenue from the fees charged per transaction and from the spread between the rate at which it buys foreign currency and the price it quotes its clients. Adedokun says the firm is developing a business driven by transactions, in which larger volumes and a leaner infrastructure can bring down its main costs and, in time, allow it to price more sharply. Clea reports that it has handled more than $50 million in transfers since its launch.
“We have to be very disciplined about pricing because our customers understand FX extremely well. These are businesses moving significant amounts of money, so even a small difference in the exchange rate matters,” Adedokun said.
Clea's competitors include Verto, Raenest and Grey, fintechs that offer businesses accounts holding several currencies, alongside cross-border payment services. In February, Olayemi Cardoso, governor of Nigeria's Central Bank (CBN), said the country gets about $600 million in diaspora remittances in a typical month, which illustrates how much money crosses Nigeria's borders.
Adedokun said Clea's scope is more limited: rather than a general-use product for sending money abroad, it is designing its offering for the particular requirements of importers.
“We don’t think of Clea as another generic international money-transfer product. We are building specifically around the workflow of an importer,” he said. “Our objective is to stay competitive on FX and fees while giving customers speed, reliability, transparency and proper payment documentation.”
Asked whether it would expand elsewhere in the region, Adedokun replied that Nigeria remains the company's main focus for growth. In the near term, it intends to widen its network of vendors, reinforce the infrastructure behind its payments, make transactions run more efficiently and bring down the basic cost of moving money.
“There’s a temptation with an African fintech company to announce ten countries very quickly, but there is still a huge amount of market for us to capture in Nigeria,” Adedokun said. “Our immediate priority is to deepen our presence in Nigeria, where we still see considerable opportunities to serve businesses involved in international trade. Ultimately, we want Clea to become the preferred financial infrastructure partner for African businesses trading globally.”
Also Read: Funke Akindele The Four London premiere sells out
