How dLocal’s planned AZA Finance acquisition became a $23.7 million asset deal

In June 2025, dLocal, the Uruguayan fintech that first expanded into Africa in 2018, announced plans to acquire AZA Finance, a Kenya-based cross-border payments company. While neither company disclosed the financial terms of the transaction, Bloomberg reported at the time that AZA Finance was valued at around $150 million in a 2024 funding round.  

Eight months later, dLocal bought a stripped-down version of the company. 

On February 27, 2026, the Uruguayan fintech acquired three key assets from AZA Finance: Mint Code Solutions S.A., a Cameroonian payments entity and its payment licence; intellectual property tied to NeWurth S.A., the Luxembourg-incorporated company behind the AZA Finance brand; and customer relationships across AZA Finance’s African payments business. 

dLocal acquired these assets by cancelling debt it had previously extended to AZA Finance on two separate occasions, with the final transaction valued at $23.7 million, according to its Q1 2026 financial report.

According to dLocal, regulatory complications prolonged the timeline to finalise the transaction, affecting AZA Finance’s topline growth during the process. Yet, dLocal said the deal gave it strategically important assets that would help deepen its presence in Cameroon—where it has operated through mobile money partnerships since 2020—and expand its reach across the Francophone Central African region.

The drawn-out transaction tells a broader story: breaking into African payments infrastructure is slow, complicated and rarely goes according to plan. Licences, local relationships, and regulatory approvals can take years to build and are rarely readily available for sale. 

Why Africa matters more to dLocal

In 2025, the company told Semafor that expanding deeper into African markets was one of the “main pillars” of its merchant-led growth strategy. That importance has only grown since.

In the first quarter of 2026, Africa and Asia accounted for about 29% of dLocal’s gross profit. According to Guillermo Lopez Perez, the company’s chief financial officer, the region grew 16% quarter-on-quarter, faster than the company average, with Nigeria and Mozambique among the strongest contributors.

dLocal’s platform now serves more than 760 enterprise merchants globally through a single application programming interface (API), according to chief executive officer Pedro Arnt. But scaling payments infrastructure across Africa remains operationally difficult.

Each African market operates differently, with its own regulators, domestic payment rails, foreign exchange (FX) restrictions, and banking systems. Building treasury operations, securing licences, and establishing regulatory relationships can take years.

While dLocal already supported payments in Cameroon through integrations with local mobile money providers, the Mint Code acquisition gives it something more valuable: a locally licenced payments entity, customer relationships and infrastructure tied to treasury and cross-border payment operations in Francophone Central Africa.

Cameroon also offers a strategic entry point into the wider Central African region, where licencing requirements are often difficult for foreign companies to navigate.

“It would definitely have taken us a lot longer to build all of that without having gotten this acquisition across the finishing line,” Arnt said on dLocal’s Q1 2026 earnings call on May 14.

Arnt added that the acquisition would bring key talent into dLocal’s African operations, although the company did not disclose exact figures.

“Africa is a region that we have been investing in consistently and where the long-term opportunity in terms of digital payment adoption, cross-border commerce growth, and the expansion of financial inclusion remains among the most compelling when we look at the globe,” he said.

dLocal currently holds 38 licences and authorisations across 26 markets, with another 16 applications still being processed, according to the company.

How the acquisition changed shape

The transaction that eventually closed in February 2026 had already begun taking shape months earlier.

According to dLocal’s Q1 2026 report, the company first signed an agreement in November 2024 that gave it the right to later acquire parts of NeWurth S.A.

Rather than paying upfront for the acquisition, dLocal financed AZA Finance through short-term credit facilities that later became central to the final deal structure.

The first loan, extended in December 2024, carried a 7% annual interest rate. A second facility issued in June 2025 carried a significantly higher 15% rate, according to the report.

The jump in pricing suggested that dLocal’s assessment of AZA Finance’s risk profile had changed while acquisition discussions were ongoing.

The agreements also gave dLocal the option to convert the debt into ownership of selected AZA Finance assets or entities at a later stage.

But shortly after dLocal announced plans to acquire the company in June 2025, the process ran into complications.

According to the company’s report, a third party filed a complaint against AZA Finance, forcing dLocal to restructure the transaction around the assets it considered most strategically valuable.

The prolonged uncertainty also weighed on AZA Finance’s business performance. Arnt said on the company’s earnings call that the delay “definitely negatively affected” AZA Finance’s topline growth.

By the time dLocal exercised its option on January 6, 2026 and secured all approvals required to close the transaction on February 27, the original full-company acquisition had been reduced to a targeted asset purchase.

What dLocal actually bought

The final transaction consisted of three separate components that dLocal treated as a single business combination.

The company acquired 100% of the issued share capital of Mint Code Solutions S.A., including its payment licence in Cameroon. It also separately acquired NeWurth’s intellectual property and AZA Finance’s customer relationships across African markets.

Mint Code was the only part of the transaction structured as a full share acquisition.

The entire $23.7 million consideration was settled through debt cancellation rather than cash payment.

At closing, AZA Finance owed dLocal $22.29 million in principal across the two loans, with an additional $1.96 million in accrued unpaid interest. dLocal then offset $500,000 tied to a trade payable owed to one of NeWurth’s subsidiaries, bringing the final net consideration to $23.7 million, according to dLocal’s Q1 2026 report.

No cash was paid directly to NeWurth as part of the acquisition.

The only cash that changed hands in the transaction moved in the opposite direction: the $791,000 held by Mint Code Solutions at closing became part of the acquired assets, according to the report.

Customer relationships accounted for the largest portion of the purchase price allocation at $14.2 million, underscoring the value dLocal placed on AZA Finance’s regional merchant network and operational footprint across African markets.

The acquired intellectual property was valued at $2.05 million, while the Mint Code payment licence was valued at $120,000. After accounting for prepaid expenses and liabilities, the remaining net assets amounted to roughly $804,000.

The acquisition also generated $6.6 million in goodwill, which dLocal said reflected expected synergies from integrating AZA Finance’s regional operations with its own existing African payments infrastructure.

The valuation remains preliminary and could still change during the standard one-year accounting review period following the acquisition.

“The allocation of the purchase price for this acquisition has been prepared on a preliminary basis, and changes to the allocation to certain assets and liabilities may occur as additional information becomes available throughout the measurement period,” dLocal noted in its report.

A strategic deal, not a financial one

Despite the complexity and publicity surrounding the transaction, dLocal has downplayed its immediate financial impact.

The company recorded $326,000 in acquisition-related costs during Q1 2026, sharply lower than the $2.3 million it recorded in 2025 as the deal moved through legal and regulatory processes.

From the February 27 closing date through March 31, the acquired business contributed revenue and gross profit that were “not material,” according to Arnt.

“To be very upfront, the transaction is not material or meaningful in the results that we have just announced,” Arnt said on the earnings call. “And that has a lot to do with a number of legal and regulatory hurdles that we faced prior to being able to close. I am glad we have crossed that finish line, but in that time period, the deal structure mutated a lot.”

Yet, even in its reduced form, the acquisition gives dLocal something difficult to build quickly in Africa: regulated infrastructure, local market access and embedded operational relationships in a strategically important region.