African fintech, Moniepoint just closed $110 million in new financing, which landed Google’s Africa Investment Fund as a new investor. Development Partners International’s African Development Partners (ADP) III fund led the Series C round.
Other investors, including African private equity firm Verod Capital and existing investor Lightrock, also participated.
Moniepoint, also backed by QED Investors, British International Investment (BII), and Endeavor Catalyst, has raised over $180 million since its launch in 2015.
According to the Financial Times, the round makes Moniepoint a unicorn — a private company with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The African fintech was last valued at slightly over $800 million in a QED-led round two years ago.
Moniepoint initially focused on providing infrastructure and payment solutions for banks and financial institutions before pivoting to becoming a business banking provider, an area where it has found remarkable success.
The African fintech caters to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across Nigeria, offering working capital, business expansion loans, and business management tools such as expense management (business payment cards), accounting and bookkeeping solutions, and insurance.
The fintech, which powers most of Nigeria’s point-of-sale (POS) transactions as the country’s largest merchant acquirer, claims it processes over 800 million transactions, with monthly total value exceeding $17 billion.
Moniepoint says it will use the new funding to accelerate its growth across Africa (90% of its business comes from Nigeria) as it builds digital payments, banking, foreign exchange (FX), credit, and business management tools. The 9-year-old fintech recently forayed into the personal banking market and claims to have seen 20x customer growth over the past year.
