Weekly Fintech News from Africa – 2nd of April ,2023

Africa is increasingly growing as a Fintech hub.

This will be an attempt to provide some quick updates from the growing world of African Fintech start up perspective.

3 main news i wanted to talk about this week. 2 from the funding of some interesting start up in North Africa and one from a Fund perspective for seed start- ups wanting to explore

1. Onepipe , a last mile payment innovator from Nigeria  received collateralized credit facility
2. Payday an interesting startup revolutionizing remote working in Rwanda and for African worker receives Seed funding
3. DFS Lab and Stellar announce a pan African fund for pre-seed and seed stage startups .

OnePipe receives N2.25 Billion or 4.8 Million US$ as collateralized credit facility

Digitizing the last mile . 

• OnePipe aims to revolutionize the last mile payment ecosystem.

 Business model

• Aggregate complex APIs from banks and fintechs into a standardized gateway that is easy to integrate and makes the partnerships seasmless for the small mom amd pop shops.

Investor check.

• The round is led by TLG Capital which seems is an African alternative investments firm and is completed by therr the TLG Africa Growth Fund but seems like a credit facility

‍Last mile woes?

• ‍Integration is a key issue for these small shops esp given they don’t have an IT support / competency. So such a facility makes the integration and digitization faster for the Startups

 It’s strategic!

• The funds will be used to expand OnePipe;s operations across Nigeria and strengthen its mission to become the leading provider of Financial services to the informal sector.

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Rwanda’s Payday Secures $3Mn seed round to drive expansion

Future of work is remote!. 

• Payday was developed to support African remote workers , freelancers and professionals with payment solutions enabling global payment processing from over 130 countries

 Business model

• Payday allows users to send and receive money in USD, GBP, Euros and 20 other currencies allowing African remote workers to earn and get oaid in international currency

Investor check.

• The seed round was led by Moniepoint DFS Lab’s Stellar Africa Fund and a few angel investors

‍Where will the money go?

• The money from this round will be deployed to secure operational licensing in UK, Canada . and also to hire some critical HR roles within the organization

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DFS Lab and Stellar launch DFS Lab Stellar Africa Fund for backing high potential builders across Africa

‍Investor check.

DFS Lab is an early-stage investor that focuses on Africa’s largest economic engines and invests in founders who are creating opportunities for everyone. It has invested in past in companies like Nala, Boost , Gobeba, TopupMama etc.

Stellar is a decentralized scalable and sustainable network for Financial product and services

Where will the money go?

The investors are more keen to see fiat currency and cross border use cases

The investment could be upto 100,000 USD with further follow on investments as teams grow.

How can companies apply?

 https://dfslab.notion.site/DFS-Lab-x-Stellar-Fund-6a20bd5202774606ac233926bef209f5