Afridigest Fintech Review: From fintech to football
Week 13 2023: March 26 - April 1
The Afridigest Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what happened in African fintech.
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On to the week’s highlights:
• Four fintech deals and one e-commerce+fintech deal were announced for ~$3.3M in disclosed funding.
• Some very good reads in today’s newsletter: A new report from the IMF looks at financial inclusion in Nigeria and the uptake of the eNaira. Citi’s 150+ page report on blockchain’s next billion users is well worth the read. Plus some interesting articles on B2B payments in Africa, the five waves of fintech, e-wallets worldwide, & more.
• News of the week: Paystack’s founder plants a football flag in Denmark. Nestcoin 'nunciates what’s next. Reports of a forty million dollar acquisition: fake news or forthcoming?
• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Payday, Yellow, Xente, Zone, Ivory Pay, Stitch, Service Cops, Nestcoin, Nala, ThetaRay, & more.
• Executives appearing: Moniepoint’s Tosin Eniolorunda, Paystack’s Shola Akinlade, Stitch’s Kiaan Pillay, Carbon’s Ngozi Dozie, Bankly’s Tomilola Majekodunmi, Yellow Card’s Chris Maurice, Pivo’s Nkiru Amadi-Emina, Union54’s Perseus Mlambo, Trade Lenda’s Adeshina Adewumi, Chipper Cash’s Ham Serunjogi & Wiza Jalakasi, LocalGlobe’s Yvonne Bajela, Patricia’s Rotimi Ogunwede, McKinsey’s Mayowa Kuyoro, Mercy Corps Venture’s Scott Onder, FXC Intelligence’s Arinola Lawal, Victor Asemota, & more.
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Week 13 2023: March 26 - April 1
💸 FundraisesFINTECH & FINTECH-ADJACENT FUNDRAISES IN AFRICA
🇷🇼 Payday, a Rwandan/Nigerian multi-currency, cross-border payments platform, raised a $3M seed round.
Proud to announce @moniepoint's investment in fast-growing, cross-border neobank, Payday. @Favourori_ is doing incredible work, and the desire to encourage that fire has spurred us to be a part of what he's building.Payday wants to power the future of work for Africa with $3M seed led by Moniepoint Inc https://t.co/jSHbpALWFS by @ulonnaya
TechCrunch @TechCrunch🇳🇬 Ivory Pay, a Nigerian crypto payments gateway, received ‘up to’ $135K.
🇰🇪 Nyayomat, a Kenyan e-commerce platform that also offers working capital financing solutions to merchants powered by smart contracts, received ‘up to’ $135K.
🇿🇦 Yellow, a South African pay-as-you-go asset-backed financing platform, raised an undisclosed amount in the first close of a Series B round.
🇺🇬 Xente, a Ugandan business banking platform offering virtual bank accounts, physical and virtual corporate cards, and digital spend management solutions, raised an undisclosed amount.
💰 Investor ActivityFINTECH & FINTECH-ADJACENT FUNDRAISES IN AFRICA
Egypt’s Camel Ventures launched Camel Ventures for Investment I, a ~$16.2M (EGP 500M) fund focused on fintech.
DFS Lab launched DFS Lab Stellar Africa Fund I, a fund focused broadly on the digital payments ecosystem.
📰 News of the WeekIt was a pretty busy week for fintech across Africa, and it started with a bit of good news.
FROM FINTECH TO FOOTBALL
Paystack Co-founder & CEO Shola Akinlade bought a 55% stake in Danish football club Aarhus Fremad for an undisclosed amount. The Northern European club will partner with Sporting Lagos, the football club Akinlade previously established in Nigeria.
A BOGUS (OR BUDDING?) BUYOUT
Elsewhere across the ecosystem, Rwandan/Nigerian multi-currency, cross-border payments platform Payday announced a seed round led by Nigerian soonicorn Moniepoint.
And soon after, a media platform reported that an acquisition was in the works, writing that “Moniepoint and Payday have agreed on broad terms to complete the [acquisition] and make it official by the end of Q2 2023.”
The two parties denied those reports, but the reporter stands strongly by his story.
Time will tell.
FURTHER FALLOUT FROM FTX
And speaking of time telling, Nigerian Web3 platform Nestcoin released an update this week.
You’ll recall from Week 45 2022’s Fintech Review that the DCG-inspired crypto platform was significantly impacted by the FTX fiasco.
It “store[d] a significant portion of the stablecoin investment [it] raised” with FTX, consequently laid off employees, and cut the salaries of those remaining by up to 40%.
What’s next for Nestcoin? E pluribus unum.
Rather than building, operating, and investing in a variety of crypto-native products across Africa, the company is now “hyperfocused” on a single product — the simple, slick, and secure self-custody wallet Onboard.
🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches