Nomba raises $30m in funding round to expand African fintech operations
Nigeria-based payment service provider, Nomba, has raised $30 million in a Pre-Series B funding round led by San Francisco-based Base10 Partners, with participation from Helios Digital Ventures, Shopify, Partech and Khosla Ventures. The funding will be used to deliver bespoke payment solutions designed specifically for African businesses, enabling them to plug gaps in their payment processes, operate more efficiently and deliver excellent customer experiences.
Nomba will also provide a range of business tools, including invoicing and order management solutions, to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of operations for businesses across the continent.
Despite the growth in digital payments across Africa, most businesses still only have access to generic point-of-sale machines, which work in isolation from the rest of the business operations, leading to inefficiencies in their business processes. With this new funding, Nomba aims to address these inefficiencies by delivering payment solutions designed for the specific services that businesses provide.
For example, restaurants will be able to access menus, manage inventory, receive payments and perform other business functions from the same hardware. For transport and logistics companies, Nomba’s solutions will enable them to directly connect their transactions to payments, creating a more seamless experience that increases sales and profitability.
Restaurants can access menus, manage inventory, receive payments and perform other business functions all from the same hardware.
Nomba is a fully licensed payment service provider in Nigeria that supports over 300,000 businesses, from solopreneurs to large organisations, with a wide range of payment solutions and management and banking tools that enable better business processes. The company processes $1 billion in monthly transactions, representing a market-leading gross transaction value (GTV) for an African payment service provider.
Founded in 2016 as “Kudi.ai”, a chatbot integration that responds to financial requests on social apps, Nomba has evolved over the years into a profitable, omnichannel payment service provider. Before this funding round, Nomba had only previously raised $5 million in funding, leveraging those funds to successfully grow the business and efficiently deliver solutions that have positively impacted hundreds of thousands of businesses across Nigeria. With this new capital, the company plans to deliver more solutions for businesses in Nigeria, across Africa and in other markets, as opportunities may emerge.
According to Yinka Adewale, CEO and co-founder of Nomba, “We see payment as a business model, not just a product, and we want to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of all that is possible in their payment processes to support their continued growth and success. We have a long list of products we have been working on, and the funds we have raised, as well as the investors that have backed us give us a lot of confidence about what can be achieved with more effective payment solutions in the hands of business owners.”
The funding round was oversubscribed, reflecting the investors’ confidence in Nomba’s innovative solutions for African businesses. Luci Fonseca, Partner at Base10, said, “Nomba’s track record of innovation and capital efficiency makes it one of the most exciting startups in Africa. We are thrilled to be supporting them to deliver their game-changing solutions to power growth and continued success for businesses in Nigeria and beyond.”
Source: Businessinsider