When COVID-19 lockdowns began in 2020, Precious Arikeri found herself spending more than ever — ordering food online, topping up data, transferring money — with no easy way to track where it all went.
The personal finance apps available were built for Western banking habits. They required tedious manual entry or were too rigid to adapt to how Nigerians actually manage money. So she brought the problem to Wahab Balogun, a software engineer she had worked with at IT firm Vascon Solutions.
What they built became Expense AI — a global AI-powered expense tracker that reads receipts instead of relying on open banking APIs. Today, the platform serves 10,000 users across 100 countries, a remarkable achievement for a two-person startup that almost died before it truly lived.
The Open Banking Trap
In June 2022, Arikeri and Balogun launched Trackfundx, their first attempt at solving the problem. The app let users connect multiple bank accounts to view aggregate spending in one dashboard. It was built on a simple premise: people often hold money across several accounts without a consolidated view.
The founders pursued two paths simultaneously. They hired a machine learning engineer to train an in-house categorization model using volunteered bank statements, while Balogun integrated Mono — a Nigerian open banking API — to fetch transaction data automatically.
But the cracks appeared quickly.
First, there was reliability. Trackfundx depended entirely on banking infrastructure. In one instance, linking an account to Trackfundx repeatedly logged users out of their primary mobile banking app. The dependency on third-party APIs meant stability was never theirs to control.
Second, there was cost. Mono charged roughly ₦200 per API call. Every time Trackfundx fetched a user's transaction data, the cost added up. "We just felt like we couldn't build our business on another person's business, because their pricing could change," Arikeri told TechCabal.
Third, and perhaps most devastating, there was geography. In September 2022, Arikeri moved to the UK for a master's program. The moment she left Nigeria, Trackfundx stopped working for her. Built around Nigerian bank accounts, the app couldn't help her track spending in a new country — the very problem she had identified in 2020, now replicated on a different continent.
The Pivot That Saved Everything
By late 2023, the founders were facing a choice: keep building on fragile open banking integrations or find a fundamentally different approach.
Balogun suggested incorporating generative AI. At the time, Arikeri was working in the UK insurance sector, where she saw AI document-extraction tools in action. She discussed these capabilities with Balogun, who began evaluating how AI could reshape their core product.
The insight was elegant in its simplicity: instead of parsing vague bank logs to infer purchases, why not let AI scan and read receipts directly? A receipt-scanning tool didn't depend on local banking APIs. It could work anywhere in the world — Nigeria, the UK, anywhere.
The shift was so fundamental that Arikeri and Balogun decided not to treat it as another feature of Trackfundx. They rebuilt around it and created Expense AI in 2024.
From One Person's Problem to 10,000 Users
Expense AI started as a receipt-reading experiment. Users could select a period and payment card, then generate expense reports as PDF or Excel files. But the founders quickly expanded beyond simple expense tracking.
They brought back capabilities from Trackfundx — income tracking, budget creation, reminders — while adding new features like savings tracking and personalized financial insights. The product remained deliberately lean. For most of its life, Expense AI has been just two people: Balogun handling engineering, Arikeri managing product, customer service, operations, and feedback.
The results speak for themselves. Today, Expense AI has crossed 10,000 users across more than 100 countries, with over 80,000 expenses processed. Subscriptions start at $8.99 monthly, locally priced at ₦2,500 in Nigeria — accessible pricing for a market that traditional fintech had largely ignored.
What This Means for African AI
Expense AI's journey from lockdown frustration to global product illustrates a pattern increasingly common in African tech: constraint breeding innovation. The founders couldn't rely on Western-style open banking infrastructure, so they built something that worked without it. They couldn't afford expensive API calls, so they pivoted to a model that scaled cheaper. They faced geographic limitations, so they built for the world from day one.
The receipt-scanning approach also sidesteps a persistent problem in African fintech: the gap between transaction data and actual spending understanding. A bank log shows you sent ₦5,000 to someone, but not whether it was for data, transport, or groceries. Receipt scanning closes that gap by reading what was actually purchased.
Arikeri is already looking ahead. She envisions Expense AI for Business — a dedicated product for entrepreneurs who need to manage multiple receipts and complex expense workflows. The two-person team that almost died on open banking APIs is now building toward a product that could serve millions of small business owners across Africa and beyond.
🔥 Hot Takes
1. Expense AI proves that African founders don't need perfect infrastructure — they need perfect timing and the willingness to pivot. While Western startups burn billions on open banking integrations and API dependencies, two Nigerians built a global product by looking at the problem differently. The constraint wasn't a limitation; it was the design brief.
2. The "receipt-first" approach is smarter than the "bank-API-first" approach for emerging markets. Open banking assumes reliable banking infrastructure, stable internet, and digital literacy that simply doesn't exist everywhere. Receipt scanning works with photos, works offline, works with cash economies. It's not a downgrade — it's an upgrade for markets that Western fintech forgot.
3. Two people, 10,000 users, 100 countries — this is the new startup benchmark. In a world where Silicon Valley celebrates $100M raises with no revenue, Expense AI's bootstrapped growth is quietly revolutionary. No venture capital, no Series A, just two founders solving a real problem with AI done right.
The Bottom Line
Expense AI is more than a personal finance app — it's proof that African AI startups can compete globally by solving problems Western companies overlook. The receipt-scanning pivot wasn't just a workaround; it was a strategic masterstroke that turned constraints into competitive advantages.
For every OpenAI burning billions on GPU clusters, there's an Expense AI proving that smart AI application can outperform brute force. The future of AI isn't just about bigger models — it's about the right models solving the right problems, in the right markets, at the right price.
Precious Arikeri and Wahab Balogun started with a lockdown problem and ended with a global solution. Their story isn't just about AI — it's about what happens when African founders stop waiting for permission and start building anyway.