Nigerian fintech Rex Africa has launched what it calls Nigeria’s first AI-native bank, built around an AI financial agent named Rex Atlas.
The company says Atlas reads a customer’s transaction history and offers guidance on saving, investing, borrowing and managing risk. Its website says the assistant can also transfer money, buy airtime and pay bills from one chat. The platform runs on RexCore, which the company describes as its own infrastructure. “We built Rex with AI at the heart of the banking experience, not as an additional feature,” said chief technology officer Opeyemi Emmanuel, in company launch material.
The product range covers savings (RexSave and RexVault), credit (RexFlex), a card (RexCard) and business tools (RexPOS and RexCredit). A banking-as-a-service portal supports accounts, collections and payouts, according to the company. Founder Yinka Odeleye is named in the launch coverage.
The launch date is not settled by the coverage we checked. Technext says the platform launched on 30 October 2026, and WeeTracker describes the launch as taking place in late October. A TechCabal press-room item dated 3 November announces the launch, and a Disrupt Africa article dated 11 November says Rex has signed up users “since launching this month”. We found no company release that resolves the date.
Rex says its products run through Rex Microfinance Bank Limited, which it describes as licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria, with eligible deposits insured by the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation. These are company statements. The Rex website carries a “Licensed & Secure” heading, but the homepage text we retrieved shows no CBN licence number.
We checked the CBN’s public list of microfinance banks, which has 790 entries. It includes one named “SLS MFB” but none named Rex. The Rex Microfinance Bank website says SLS Microfinance Bank has been rebranded as RexMicrofinance Bank. That would link the two names, but we have not confirmed it from a regulatory record, and the list entry gives no address or licence date. Neither name appears among the 46 microfinance bank licences the CBN revoked with effect from 1 July 2026.
The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation raised its maximum deposit cover in May 2024 to ₦5 million per depositor at deposit money banks and ₦2 million at microfinance banks, according to coverage of its announcement. A Rex saver with a balance above ₦2 million would be insured only up to that ceiling.
We found no independent evidence for the “first” claim. The Apple App Store page lists a version 1.0.0 released on 29 March 2024, more than two years before the October 2026 launch the coverage describes. We have not established whether that release is the same product. The App Store page names RexCredit Limited as provider and Rex Financial Technologies Ltd as copyright holder, names that differ from the bank’s.
Several questions remain open. Which entity holds the licence, and which holds customer deposits? The company has not said. WeeTracker and Index Prima both note that the company has not said what registration it holds for its investment guidance. WeeTracker reported on 9 November that the site carries no privacy policy or terms; the homepage text we retrieved did not show either, though text extraction can miss footer links. Both outlets also point to a tension between the assistant’s borrowing guidance and the company’s credit products, which the company has not addressed. Rex reports “thousands” of individual users and “hundreds” of business users, but has published no customer, deposit or loan figures.
Sources
- Technext, "Rex Africa launches AI-powered banking platform with focus on personalised financial guidance" (Mubarak Bankole)
- Index Prima, "Nigeria's 'First AI Bank'? 7 Questions Rex Must Answer"
- TechCabal press-room item, "Rex Africa launches Nigeria's first AI-native bank" (dated 3 November 2026)
- Disrupt Africa (Tom Jackson), "Nigeria's Rex Africa launches AI-native bank with conversational financial agent"
- WeeTracker (Henry Nzekwe), "The AI Bank Promising To Fix Nigeria's Money Problems Has A Lot To Prove"
- Rex Africa website
- Rex Microfinance Bank website
- Central Bank of Nigeria, public microfinance bank list (data feed)
- Channels Television, "CBN Revokes Operating Licences Of 46 Microfinance Banks (FULL LIST)"
- BusinessDay, "NDIC raises deposit insurance coverage for banks depositors to N5m, MFBs N2m" (2 May 2024)
- Rex Africa on the Apple App Store
