Bujeti has stated that automation and AI play a critical role in helping businesses navigate compliance by reducing manual work and costly errors, especially with Nigeria’s new tax reforms set to take effect in 2026.
As Nigerian businesses prepare for tighter regulations, rising costs, and a new tax regime, the fintech startup emphasised the importance of automation and artificial intelligence as essential tools for survival.
Achille Arouko, co-founder and CEO of Bujeti, while speaking at its Coin and Connect event, told BusinessDay that automation comes first and AI where it matters.
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“Although Bujeti uses Artificial Intelligence, the company is careful not to label everything ‘AI-powered’ but instead, automation is the foundation, with AI applied where speed and scale matter most,” he noted.
“We don’t put AI on everything. If an algorithm already works well, we use it, but when we are reconciling thousands of transactions or analysing large datasets, AI helps us do it faster and with fewer errors,” Arouko stated.
One of Bujeti’s more ambitious features is its planned virtual CFO, which is an assistant that can communicate with business owners through text or voice. The assistant can answer questions such as how much runway a company has left, flag overspending, or warn when upcoming payments could cause cash-flow issues.
Arouko said the goal is to let founders ‘listen to their money’ in real time, rather than discovering problems months later. Using automation, businesses can set rules such as how revenue is split across departments, who can approve payments, or if transactions can go through without receipts.
“Once the rules are set, the system enforces them without founders needing to chase staff or review every transaction manually.”
Bujeti positions itself as a financial control platform beyond payments because it brings together invoicing, payroll, budgeting, approvals, workflows, and tax management into a single dashboard.
Through a single dashboard, businesses can manage corporate cards and expense policies.
“The idea is to reduce chaos and reliance on manual processes like Excel sheets, emails, and endless approvals,” CEO of Bujeti said, while stating how the firm is helping businesses move beyond basic banking to gain real-time control over spending, compliance, and decision-making.
Founded in 2021, Bujeti helps businesses like Selar and Drugstoc manage finances, replacing fragmented tools with automated workflows, spending limits, and real-time financial insights, allowing founders to scale faster.
At the recent Coin & Connect event, experts noted that control is less about power and more about systems while stating that control is increasingly about visibility, structure, and speed.
Chude Osiegbu, co-founder and CEO of Venco, said control is what allows founders to transition out of day-to-day operations, while Kelechi Abiri, founder and CEO of Reposebay, stressed that policies, training, and data are critical to effective control, especially when making decisions like salary increases.
Adeola Akinyemi, COO of Show Gear Ltd, noted that founders often underestimate how much influence governments, customers, and employees have on business outcomes.
While speaking about businesses being prepared for Nigeria’s new tax reality, Aruoko said many SMEs either overpay taxes out of fear or underpay out of ignorance, which are both risky outcomes.
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“Bujeti’s tax intelligence is designed to automatically interpret applicable taxes based on a company’s activities, flag exemptions, and prevent unnecessary payments.
“Some taxes still require human professionals, but Bujeti automates everything that can be standardised, which lowers costs for small businesses that would otherwise rely on expensive consultants or gatekeepers,” he noted.
Nnanna Egwu, senior product manager at Bujeti, said the company’s product vision is to give founders clarity fast. “Our goal is that in 15 seconds, a business owner can know the financial health of their company.”
“AI integrations also allow users to ask natural-language questions, such as how much they have spent in the last month, which invoices are overdue, how much tax is pending, and what their customer acquisition cost is,” Egwu stated.
