Why Kenya’s Lipa Later went under administration in 2025
On Techpoint Digest, we discuss why Kenya's Lipa Later went bankrupt in 2025, how MTN is entering the lending market, Namibia's pressure to reverse the Starlink ban, and how Enza has received Bank of Ghana approval for an infrastructure play.
O’hayo,
Victoria from Techpoint here,
Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
Why Kenya’s Lipa Later went under administration in 2025
MTN is coming for the lending market
Namibia faces pressure to reverse Starlink ban
Enza gets Bank of Ghana approval for infrastructure play
Why Kenya’s Lipa Later went under administration in 2025
Lipa Later
Kenya’s Lipa Later is officially gone as a going concern, and its founder, Eric Muli, is now publicly unpacking how it all unravelled. The company was placed under administration in March 2025, with Joy Vipinchandra Bhatt of Moore JVB Consulting appointed to oversee its restructuring.
Since then, there have been attempts to rescue what’s left, including interest from Canada’s Engage Capital, which reportedly tabled a $24.5 million offer, and London-based Advance Global Capital, which proposed a $5 million loan facility. In the middle of all this, Muli, now 34, has broken his silence in a May 2026 interview, laying out a mix of Covid-era repayment failures, investor pressure, currency shocks and early-stage missteps that ultimately sank the company.
To understand the scale of the fall, it helps to remember how big Lipa Later had become. Founded in 2017 when Muli was just 23, the startup grew into one of the region’s leading buy-now-pay-later players. At its peak, it had issued around $100 million in credit, served close to a million customers, employed more than 200 staff, and built a network of roughly 1,000 agents across Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria.
Lipa Later’s model was simple but capital-heavy: customers paid a deposit, took goods like phones or appliances, and repaid in instalments, while the company paid merchants upfront and bore the credit risk. Backed by multiple funding rounds from US VCs, it expanded aggressively, including acquiring Sky.Garden in 2021 and reaching a valuation near $100 million.
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