The Nigerian founder on a mission to end hidden fees in the $5 billion UK to Nigeria remittance corridor

For many immigrants, sending money home is more than a transaction. It is school fees, medical bills, rent, family support, and a way to stay connected to loved ones thousands of miles away.

For Olufemi Olaogun, founder of SendOva, that reality is deeply personal.

Olufemi grew up in Gowon Estate, Egbeda, Lagos, a neighbourhood that shaped him early: grit, problem-solving, a deep sense of community and service. His mother was a teacher, the kind of woman who believed that education was the only door worth walking through. So when the opportunity came to further his studies in the United Kingdom in 2004, Olufemi walked through it.

He found himself in the same position as millions of migrants around the world: working hard, supporting family back home and regularly sending money across borders. What surprised him was how expensive and frustrating the process could be.

“Every time I sent money home, I felt like a portion of it disappeared before it ever reached the people it was intended for,” he recalls. “Between hidden fees, poor exchange rates and delays, it often felt like the system was working against the customer.”

The experience not only shaped his professional journey but also sparked the vision that became SendOva.

The Man Behind The Mission

Olufemi spent more than two decades building expertise across some of the most demanding financial environments in the world, such as Nigeria, the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. He has worked across cross border payment, fintechs, accumulating an understanding of why cross-border money movement is broken not from the outside, but from deep within the processes and operations.

What sets him apart from most founders in the remittance space is not the years logged, but what those years taught him to see. Every inefficiency, every unjustified delay, he has watched these not as market conditions to accept, but as failures he knew someone, someday, had the obligation to fix.

For Olufemi, transparency is not a feature. It is the foundation of trust.

“I didn’t set out to build a fintech company. I set out to solve a problem I had lived through myself, standing on the other side of a broken system, trying to send money home to the people who sacrificed for me to be here.”

What Makes SendOva Special

SendOva’s proposition is deliberately simple but impactful and built on the four pillars below:

• Transparent Pricing: Customers view the live exchange rate before each transaction and know exactly what they are sending and what their recipient will receive.
• Zero Transfer Fees: No charges buried in the fine print.
• Competitive Exchange Rates: Offering better rates than top competitors in the industry.
• Fast, Reliable Transfers: Providing a reliable, fast, and trustworthy app experience.

Whether it is a finance professional in Manchester paying school fees in Lagos or a small business owner in London settling a supplier in Kano, the need is the same: money that arrives quickly, in full, with no surprises.

Regulation As A Foundation, Not A Badge

SendOva is the trading name of Balazoo Express Ltd, a UK payment institution registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and supervised for anti-money laundering compliance by HMRC, headquartered in Canary Wharf, London.

Olaogun understood early what many market entrants underestimate: price alone does not win the diaspora sender. This is a community that has been burned by platforms that promised speed and delivered delays, or advertised zero fees and buried the cost in the rate. Regulatory oversight is the level of verification that diaspora customers have earned the right to demand before trusting an app with their family’s money.

The Road Ahead

SendOva is expanding into Ghana and Kenya, leveraging robust infrastructure, compliance architecture, and a rate transparency model established on its UK-to-Nigeria foundation.

Olaogun frames it not as a growth strategy but as the same mission extended to every diaspora community that has quietly absorbed the same injustice in different corridors.

More Than A Transfer

For Olufemi Olaogun, SendOva is not simply another fintech app competing for market share in a crowded remittance market. It is the culmination of more than two decades spent understanding how money moves, where value is lost, and why migrants are often forced to pay the highest price for supporting the people they love.

Every transfer tells a story. A son supporting ageing parents,  family funding a medical emergency and a small business owner settling suppliers back home.

SendOva was built on the belief that those moments are too important to be diminished by hidden fees, poor exchange rates or unnecessary delays.

The mission is simple: help migrants keep more of what they earn and ensure more of it reaches the people who matter most.

“Every time someone uses SendOva to send money home, they’re not just making a transfer. They’re choosing not to be taken advantage of. That’s what we built this for.”

Download SendOva app here.

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