The Last-Day Email: How Branch International's Sudden Africa Layoff Tested Kenyan and Nigerian Fintech Workers

The video call began like any other company-wide meeting at the San Francisco–headquartered digital lender Branch International. Engineers in Nairobi, customer-support agents in Lagos, product managers across both cities logged in expecting a routine update. Some had heard the company was discussing fresh fundraising; a few even thought a hiring push might be coming. What they got instead was a short, dispassionate announcement, followed within hours by a termination email that said their last day of employment was that same day.

The decision, confirmed by Tuko News and first detailed by the pan-African technology publication TechCabal, has rippled across Kenya's and Nigeria's tightly knit fintech communities ever since. Branch has not publicly disclosed how many staff were affected, but several former employees say access to internal systems and work email was cut almost immediately after the meeting ended. A handful described being mid-conversation on company chat tools when their accounts went dark.

"Your last day of employment will be today"

The phrasing in the termination email — "your last day of employment will be today" — was widely circulated on group chats in the days that followed. Branch is not a small player in either market. It launched in Kenya in 2015, offering mobile-phone loans from KSh 500 to KSh 1 million, and in 2022 it acquired an 84.89 percent stake in Century Microfinance Bank, formalising its move into licensed microfinance. In Nigeria, the company has built a similarly large presence as one of the original mobile-first lenders that took on the country's commercial banks for everyday consumer credit.

That history made the timing of the cuts particularly jarring. Several of the laid-off staff had been with Branch for years, and many lived in cities where a senior fintech salary often supported extended family at home and remittances to relatives abroad. The four months of compensation Branch is offering, along with health insurance coverage through the end of 2026, is unusually generous by African market standards. But the structure of the announcement — no warning, no transitions, no offers of internal redeployment — is what has shaken the broader tech labour market.

A profitable company that still cut

Branch was unusual in being publicly profitable. The company told staff and the press that the layoffs were "not a decision driven by financial distress" and that its Nigerian and Kenyan markets had ended the previous financial year in the black. Group-wide, Branch reported approximately thirty million dollars in profit for the 2025 financial year. The firm said its African operations hold "significant cash on hand" and carry no debt, and it denied that the cuts were tied to a new fundraising round.

If that explanation is accurate, the layoffs are part of a different kind of trend, one that many Kenyan and Nigerian engineers have been quietly watching: the move by African fintechs to lock in profitability with leaner permanent teams, contracting out work that earlier-stage versions of the same companies once hired aggressively for. The message landing in WhatsApp groups across Westlands and Yaba this week is that turning a profit is no longer a guarantee against being cut.

The pattern beneath the headcount

Branch is not alone. Earlier this month, Standard Chartered announced plans to eliminate at least 7,800 back-office positions globally over four years, citing artificial intelligence and automation as the principal driver. Many of those roles sit in operations hubs that serve African and Asian markets and employ Kenyan and Nigerian professionals on local and diaspora contracts. The two cases are different in scale and cause, but together they sketch a familiar landscape for younger African workers in finance and technology: a sector that until recently rewarded rapid scale is now optimising for what it can run with fewer people.

For Kenyan tech professionals weighing whether to chase opportunities in the Gulf, the United Kingdom or North America, episodes like the Branch announcement reinforce a calculation that the diaspora has been making out loud for the past two years. Domestic salaries at well-funded startups remain attractive, but the implicit promise of long-term stability has weakened. Many of those laid off this week have already begun reaching out to contacts in Nairobi-to-London or Lagos-to-Toronto talent pipelines.

The severance cushion, and what it doesn't cover

Four months of pay, settlement of unused holidays, and health cover through the end of the year is not a small package, and several former employees have publicly acknowledged that fact. What the severance does not cover is the harder, less visible loss. Mortgages signed against fintech salaries, school fees committed for the second and third terms, parents in upcountry villages or Niger Delta towns who depend on a regular Nairobi or Lagos transfer — none of these recalibrate as quickly as a payroll line. For diaspora-curious Kenyans in particular, the question is not simply whether to relocate but how to insulate dependents at home from the next sudden e-mail.

The other gap is reputational. Branch employees often held senior product, risk, and engineering roles. Finding equivalent positions inside Kenya's or Nigeria's still-small set of well-funded fintechs is harder than the size of the local ecosystems suggests. Many will look outward: to Equity Bank's growing technology arm, to Safaricom's M-Pesa product teams, to remote engineering roles at European and American firms that now hire fluently across African time zones.

Why this matters beyond one company

For the diaspora community that watches East and West African tech as both a homecoming option and a remittance partner, the Branch story is a data point rather than a verdict. Kenya and Nigeria still produce more fintech engineers than their domestic firms can absorb. Diaspora-led capital still flows back into Nairobi and Lagos startups at a healthy clip. M-Pesa's recent diaspora-product updates and the new wave of cross-border payment startups suggest the underlying market is, if anything, deepening.

But the company-wide call that ended in mass termination has cemented a quieter shift. The implicit deal of African fintech employment — long hours, ambitious targets, generous equity in exchange for a path to long-term professional stability — is being renegotiated, often in a single video call. The next time a senior Branch engineer in Nairobi answers a recruiter from Manchester or Vancouver, the calculus will be a little different. So, too, will the conversation around the kitchen table when she finally tells her parents she is moving.