In the heart of Nairobi’s leafy suburb of Karen, a fintech startup is revolutionizing how Kenyan businesses manage their finances.
Boya, founded in 2021, offers a comprehensive business-to-business (B2B) platform that integrates corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, and more, all under one roof.
Techjournal sat down with Alphas Sinja, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Boya, to learn more about their journey and vision.
Q: Alphas, thank you for having us. Could you start by explaining what Boya does?
Alphas Sinja: Thank you for coming.
Boya is a fintech company, and not a bank, that empowers businesses to manage their finances efficiently. We’ve built a platform that consolidates various financial tools, so businesses can control and monitor their spending in real-time. Think of it as a central hub for corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, and even mobile money transactions. We partner with regulated banks like DTB and card service providers like Visa to provide the actual banking services.
Q: What prompted you to start Boya?
Alphas Sinja: We saw a significant pain point for businesses. Traditional financial management processes were often fragmented with payments, reconciliations and accounting happening in multiple systems. On average, a typical business uses at least six tools to manage the finance operations. We wanted to create a solution that simplified these processes and provided real-time visibility and control for businesses
The core problem Boya solves is the time-consuming and often inaccurate process of financial management. Businesses struggled with consolidating payments, tracking expenses, and generating reports, sometimes taking up to 60 days.
Boya simplifies these processes, enabling instant consolidation, tracking, and reporting, eliminating backlogs, delays, and lost receipts. This not only benefits finance departments but also employees, who can easily access funds, upload receipts, and track spending, eliminating tedious fund reconciliation.
Q: How does Boya address these challenges?
Alphas Sinja: Our platform offers a range of features designed to streamline financial management. We provide corporate cards, both physical and virtual, with built-in spending policies. We also offer corporate mobile money wallets, eliminating the need to send funds to personal accounts. Our expense management system automates receipt collection and categorization, and our bill payments feature simplifies invoice processing.
Q: You started by focusing on SMEs, but now cater to MSMEs and larger enterprises. How has that transition been?
Alphas Sinja: It’s been a natural evolution. Initially, we focused on businesses with 5-100 employees. However, we quickly realized that our platform could benefit businesses of all sizes. We now support companies with over 1,000 employees, and we can even customize features to meet their specific needs.
Q: What are the cost structures for businesses using Boya?
Alphas Sinja: Small businesses pay around $25 per month for basic features, and $100 for advanced features. However, customized features incur additional charges. Also, we include the expense policies for every business , such as requiring VAT-compliant receipts or specific spending categories, to ensure compliance and transparency. Because of this, we can provide finance teams with better data for decision making.
Q: How does Boya simplify financial management for employees?
Alphas Sinja: Not only does Boya simplify things for the finance department, but also for employees. Employees no longer need to worry about long wait times for business funds allocation or preparing expense reports. Instead, they can easily access funds through the app, upload receipts, and track their expenses as they spend. The company can allocate funds to individuals, teams, or departments while ensuring transparency and accountability in real time. Furthermore, the system facilitates seamless accounting.
Q: Boya has seen significant growth, with 1,200 businesses using the platform as of February 2025. What’s driving this growth?
Alphas Sinja: Our growth at Boya has been driven by a combination of product innovation, customer-centricity, and strategic partnerships and there are a few key factors fueling this momentum:
Q: What is Boya’s partnership with Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) focused on?
Alphas Sinja: Boya’s partnership with DTB centers around launching virtual expense cards for businesses. DTB provides its “Banking as a Service (BaaS)” through its Astra platform, which allows Boya to integrate banking functionalities directly into its platform. Essentially, DTB supplies the banking infrastructure that enables Boya to offer virtual card services.
This collaboration allows Boya’s customers to access virtual corporate cards, which significantly streamlines their payment and expense management processes. It simplifies how they handle company spending.
Q: What role does Visa play in Boya’s virtual card offering?
Alphas Sinja: The virtual corporate cards issued through the DTB partnership are supported by the Visa card scheme. This means that Boya’s customers can use their virtual cards for transactions wherever Visa is accepted, both locally and internationally, providing them with global reach and reliability.
Q: What are the key benefits of these partnerships for businesses using Boya?
Alphas Sinja: The partnerships provide several key benefits, including:
- Enhanced Expense Management: Businesses can efficiently track, manage, and reconcile company expenses, improving financial transparency.
- Virtual Corporate Cards: The collaboration allows the provision of virtual corporate cards, which are highly useful for online transactions.
- Streamlined Financial Processes: The integration of DTB’s services into Boya’s platform simplifies financial workflows.
- Increased Efficiency: By combining Boya’s technology with DTB’s banking infrastructure and Visa’s global network, the partnerships create a powerful and efficient financial solution.
Q: In simple terms, how do these partnerships work together?
Alphas Sinja: Think of it this way: DTB provides the banking foundation for the virtual cards, Visa provides the global network for those cards to be used, and Boya provides the platform that makes it all easy and efficient for businesses to manage their finances.
Q: What challenges have you faced along the way?
Alphas Sinja: Launching a fintech startup in Kenya comes with its challenges. Obtaining regulatory approvals and integrating with banks and payment networks took time. For example, getting CBK approval took us almost two years, and Visa integration took nearly a year. We also had to pilot our cards with 50 customers before a full market release.
Q: What are Boya’s operational scope and future expansion plans?
Alphas Sinja: Currently, we are operational in Kenya.
Businesses don’t just need to track expenses; they need to optimize cash flow. Our upcoming features, such as AI-powered expense review, money market fund integration, and credit cards, are giving companies more ways to manage their finances efficiently. We’re focused on expanding our partnerships with banks.
Our vision is to allow customers to select and connect their own banks directly to our platform. We’re also working on AI-powered tools for expense review and reconciliation, which will launch in May or June. While we are currently focused on the Kenyan market, we are planning to expand to East Africa by next year, but will keep 90% of our focus on Kenya.
Q: Boya has secured funding since its seed stage. How is this capital being deployed?
Alphas Sinja: While we haven’t publicly disclosed the exact amount raised from our various investors, I can share how we’re strategically utilizing these funds.
Our primary goal is to achieve profitability by June 2025. To that end, we’re investing in scaling our operational capacity, enhancing our product offerings, and expanding our customer base within Kenya.
We’re also exploring the possibility of another funding round next year. This would further solidify our position in the Kenyan market and provide the necessary resources to support our planned expansion into East Africa.
Above all, we’re committed to investing in deeper customer understanding, ensuring our platform continues to meet their evolving needs.
Q: What is Boya’s current company size?
Alphas Sinja: Boya currently has 15 employees.
Q: What advice would you give to aspiring fintech entrepreneurs in Kenya?
Alphas Sinja: Focus on solving real customer problems. Be patient and persistent, as building a successful fintech startup takes time and effort. Also, prioritize building strong partnerships and always put your customers first.
Q: What are some of the upcoming features and partnerships for Boya?
Alphas Sinja:As we continue to enhance Boya’s capabilities, we’re excited about several upcoming features and partnerships that will bring even more value to our customers. One of the major innovations we’re introducing this year is AI-powered agents for expense review and reconciliation. These AI agents will automate expense verification, flag anomalies, and provide insights, significantly reducing the manual effort required in financial oversight.
We’re also launching a money market fund feature, allowing businesses to optimize their idle funds by earning returns while maintaining easy access to liquidity. This is part of our broader vision to help companies manage not just expenses but also treasury functions more efficiently.
Another key focus is expanding our support for our existing customers across East Africa. Many of our customers operate regionally, and we’re committed to ensuring that Boya seamlessly supports their operations across multiple markets.
Additionally, we’ll be introducing credit cards, giving businesses more flexible payment options alongside our existing expense management tools.
On the partnership front, we are strengthening our banking relationships to provide a better experience for our customers, from faster on-boarding to improved payment infrastructure.
These partnerships will be instrumental in delivering new financial products and enhancing transaction efficiency.
Overall, our goal is to continue evolving Boya into the ultimate financial operations platform for businesses, making it easier for businesses to control, optimize, and grow their financial workflows.
Conclusion
Boya’s growth highlights the potential for fintech innovation to transform business operations in Kenya. Because of its user-friendly platform and commitment to customer satisfaction, Boya is poised to play a significant role in shaping the future of financial management in the region.
