Nigeria-essentially based fully TeamApt, which offers agent banking products and companies with plans to roll out person-centered digital banking capabilities, has raised an undisclosed sum in a Sequence B spherical.
In a recount, co-founder and CEO Tosin Eniolorunda stated the funding “enables us to develop our alternate options to a style of parts of Africa.” The firm at narrate operates easiest in Nigeria nonetheless has its sights say on breaking ground in a francophone African country later this yr.
Officially undisclosed “for change causes” per a TeamApt representative in an electronic mail, Eniolorunda had indicated in June that it became as soon as “a pair of tens of tens of millions of dollars” in size. Two folks conversant in the firm’s fundraising assignment confirmed it is some distance rarely lower than $20 million.
Novastar Ventures, the Kenya-essentially based fully firm, led the spherical with the participation of World Ventures (a firm within the United Arab Emirates), CDC Neighborhood (the UK’s voice finance institution), Soma Capital, Kepple Africa Ventures and Oui Capital.
Dutch entrepreneurial voice financial institution FMO also acquired in on the trek with a $2 million punt, per TechCrunch.
This recent funding announcement follows TeamApt’s $5.5m Sequence A spherical closed in 2019 led by Quantum Capital Partners, a Lagos-essentially based fully investment firm owned by Jim Ovia, the founding father of Zenith Bank.
Even supposing below the radar for great of its six yr existence, TeamApt boasts numbers that might perchance way it amongst Nigeria’s most vigorous and supreme performing financial technology startups.
TeamApt’s pivotal change for the time being is Moniepoint, a application acknowledge that powers agent banking in Nigeria. The firm says that it processed $3.5bn in May perchance presumably well and is the leading agent banking platform on volume of transactions, citing an April portray from the Shared Agent Community Growth Facility (SANEF) – the physique accredited by the Central Bank of Nigeria to oversee agent banking in Nigeria.
SANEF’s reports need to now not public and it is some distance rarely particular which a style of companies are captured in it. Nonetheless the agent banking way is believed to incorporate Firstmonie, Paga and OPay, the Opera-backed fintech.
In March 2021, TeamApt stated it processed over ₦1trillion ($2.4 bn) for the first time. The $3.5 bn processed in May perchance presumably well became as soon as from a putrid of 68 million transactions. Underlying these transactions is a network of agents numbering about 100,000 at some stage in Nigeria’s 36 states.
Within the twelve months ended April 2021, the firm stated it had processed a complete of $16bn at some stage in its platforms which involves Monnify, a carrier that offers virtual accounts to fintechs and a style of carrier suppliers to facilitate rapid notification of financial institution transactions.
Nonetheless the majority of the firm’s operations (and income) is from Moniepoint, forming the thought for plans to evolve the platform into the person digital banking way. Whereas Moniepoint will continue to energy agent banking, TeamApt plans to create a person app facet of it for folks as a digital financial institution.
Besides geographical growth and a product originate, what else does TeamApt occupy up its sleeves?
Closing week, the firm’s founders had been offered because the latest members of the Endeavor Nigeria network, which map they sterling to receive investment from the network’s Catalyst Fund (There’s precedent: Endeavor’s investment in Flutterwave‘s Sequence B in January 2020).
Plans for more funding are already underway.
A TeamApt representative stated “a assortment C dialog is ongoing [and] need to be accomplished within the coming months and we’ll be happy to voice at that time.”
Eniolorunda, the CEO, anticipates that they might perchance moreover rapidly upward push to develop into one billion-greenback startup. “We ask the firm to attain unicorn-kind valuations rapidly,” he told TechCabal in June.
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