Kuda Bank

Kuda spent much of 2025 and 2026 tightening its belt rather than chasing headlines, and the numbers explain why. The digital bank narrowed its annual loss to roughly $5.83 million in 2024, an improvement of more than 80% from the $35.11 million it lost the year before, helped by its Nigerian business nearly doubling its naira revenue and cutting costs sharply.

That improving financial picture did not stop a hard reset in March 2026, when Kuda laid off hundreds of employees in a company-wide restructuring, with marketing losing nearly half its staff. The company described the move as a step to realign its organisation for its next phase rather than a response to financial distress, offering severance packages of up to seven months' pay.

On the regulatory side, Kuda ended 2025 and opened 2026 with a genuine step up. In late January 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria upgraded Kuda Microfinance Bank from a unit licence to a national microfinance banking licence, part of a broader upgrade that also covered Moniepoint, OPay and PalmPay, letting Kuda open physical customer experience centres across Nigeria for the first time.

Taken together, the past year shows a company trying to grow up rather than simply grow. Kuda has spent it cutting losses, cutting staff, and picking up a heavier regulatory licence all at once, a combination that reflects the wider mood among Nigeria's digital banks as they move from a decade of rapid customer acquisition toward a harder test: proving they can run profitably at the scale they have already reached.