Author: Akin Naphtal

Nigerian fintech company Flutterwave has raised US$250 million in Series D funding to drive its expansion plan, tripling its valuation to over US$3 billion in the process. Launched in 2016, Flutterwave builds modern payments technology and infrastructure for Africa to enable people and businesses to connect with the global economy. Its solution enables banks and merchants to replace multiple payment integrations with one simple API, which enables the processing of any form of payment anywhere in Africa. The startup has processed over 200 million transactions worth over US$16 billion to date and serves more than 900,000 businesses, including customers like…

Open finance continues to be a significant theme in the world of fintech as businesses tap APIs to access customers’ financial accounts and provide a gamut of integrated and embedded financial services. In the latest development, Stitch — one of the prominent players building and operating these APIs in Africa — confirmed to that it has raised $21 million in Series A funding. This news follows the $4 million Stitch raised out of stealth in February 2021, a prequel to the $2 million extensions round it secured four months ago, bringing its seed round to $6 million. In total, Stitch has raised $27 million to date.…

Texas sues Meta for collecting facial recognition data of Over 10 Million Residents Texas is suing Facebook’s parent company, Meta (FB (FBK)), over allegations the social media giant illegally harvested the facial recognition data of tens of millions of state residents for a decade. The lawsuit, filed Monday in Texas’s Harrison County District Court, argues that a now-shuttered Facebook (FB) photo-tagging feature failed to get Texans’ informed consent before gathering their facial recognition data. The feature worked by analyzing faces in photos, including those of non-Facebook users, and recommending that Facebook users tag the people that the tool identified. Facebook announced it would discontinue the tool in…

Contact Financial Holding, Egypt’s non-bank consumer finance provider, has invested $9 million in the country’s ecommerce super-app Wasla, setting the stage for the rollout of new online shopping capabilities, products and regional expansion. Contact has been in the business of consumer finance since 2001, while Wasla was founded in 2018 by former Serag Meneassy and Taymour Sabry, both ex-Rocket Internet entrepreneurs, and investment banker Mahmoud El Said. “It’s an equity investment, through a series of investments that aim to grow the business going forward, to enable their business plan and their achievement of the company’s vision,” Contact Financial Holding chairman Hazem Moussa explained. The e-commerce platform is…

With a target of simplifying payment operations in Africa and the Middle-East, Egypt and U.S.-based MoneyHash has received US$3 million. The start-up plans to build a super-API for payment operations. The company describes itself as the Middle East and Africa’s “first super-API for payment orchestration and revenue operations.” The pre-seed round is an extension of an undisclosed six-figure raise MoneyHash announced last June from investors Ventures Platform, Kepple Africa Ventures, LoftyInc Capital and lead COTU Ventures. The Middle Eastern early-stage fund also led this extension, with participation from previous backers in the initial pre-seed round and others like VentureSouq, VentureFriends, The…

Mr Olutokun Toriola, Chief Executive Officer, MTN Nigeria, has urged Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to use the data presented to them through telecommunication companies and financial systems to access capital. Toriola, gave the advice on Friday at the Sparkle’s webinar for SMEs with the theme: ’’Simplifying Support for Small Businesses’’. According to him, data is abundant in both the telecommunications and financial system. “The person to make magic out of this is the person that can turn data into wisdom because the data is out there and not many people have successfully been able to transform and beneficially structure…

The Executive Vice-President of the European Union (EU) Commission, Margrethe Vestager, has disclosed that the EU has approved a three-year Digital Economy Package worth €820 million for Nigeria. This, she said, was part of a Global Gateway Africa-Europe Investment Package worth €150 billion announced recently by the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Vestager, who spoke while leading a delegation of the EU Commission on a visit to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo at the State House, announced an EU-Nigeria Digital Economy Package of at least €820 million until 2024. According to her, the package will help enhance secure…

Remedial Health has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies, and stem the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products, starting with Nigeria before expanding to the rest of Africa. The round was led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with participation from Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate Fund, and other angel investors, including Flutterwave’s Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Victor Asemota. Part of the new funding will be used to extend the startup’s buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) offering, for an even wider reach. Founded in 2020 by Samuel Okwuada, a trained pharmacist and self-taught software developer, together…

Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed deals with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, and Vodacom in Tanzania, which appear to be paying off after its user-base almost doubled as it added paying subscribers as a source of revenue. MTN and Airtel Nigeria have a combined customer-base of 124.5 million, while Vodacom Tanzania has 15.6 million subscribers, giving Mdundo access to a huge target audience. According to the Founder, Martin Nielsen, “This is a new revenue stream for us.…

Startups have sought to use technology to digitize processes in Africa’s B2B e-commerce and retail space over the past couple of years. While many focus on moving products and providing credit, issues around cash overdependency haven’t been tackled at scale.  Here’s why this is a critical problem. When traditional distributors move goods from manufacturers and suppliers to retailers, they collect cash through a network of agents. These agents, from different parts, then proceed to make lump-sum payments into a central bank account. For the most part, there is a lot of fraud behind the scenes because of inefficiencies in manual reconciliation processes on…