The Cameroonian fintech startup Diool has announced that it was able to raise US$3.5 million in funding to scale its operations beyond its present status. Diool’s transformation has been inspirational. From a mobile recharge project back in 2015, offering small merchants a way to sell prepaid recharges to their customers from a single app, but eventually pivoted into financial services aggregation after realising payment interchanges and financial services access was the pain point of its target users.
Diool’s platform makes it simpler for small merchants to accept payments from their customers and repay their suppliers, using many payment methods. In the two years since the pivot, Diool has signed up more than 2,000 merchants, who have transacted more than US$120 million via its platform. It has payments integrations with all mobile money providers in Cameroon, and a regulatory partnership with French multinational investment bank and financial services company Societe Generale.
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The startup said the US$3.5 million in funding from the Lundin family plus existing investors, has moved its total secured investment to US$4.6 million. The startup’s chief executive officer (CEO) Serge Boupda told Disrupt Africa its goal was to build a simpler way to access financial services for small merchants in Africa.
“We’re doing Cameroon and payments first,” he said. “We’ve also spent some time rebuilding operational architecture and processes, to match new payments regulations in Cameroon – a critical building block for financial services distribution in the region.”
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With the funding on board, Diool is now working on expanding at home, before raising further funding and scaling internationally.
“Our next stage is growing the team and product to scale in Cameroon ahead of entering other countries,” Boupda said.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry