CrowdForce, a Nigerian agency banking platform backed by Y Combinator, has secured US$3.6 million in a pre-Series A fundraising round to triple its PayForce agent network this year and expand its financial service services to neglected Nigerian communities.
Aruwa Capital Management led the US$3.6 million pre-Series A investment, which was divided between stock and debt and included HAVAC and AAIC.
“Fintechs and challenger banks are emerging in Africa to deliver better financial services via digital rails. It’s a fantastic development in the market, but cash is clearly still king in Nigeria. Ninety-seven per cent of retail transactions happen offline. There is a clear need to build an offline distribution network to enable fintechs and challengers to reach the mass market — this is exactly what we’re doing at CrowdForce, and this round will accelerate our momentum even more,” said Oluwatomi Ayorinde, CrowdForce’s CEO and co-founder.
CrowdForce plans to use the funds to grow its personnel, geographical operations, and marketing efforts in order to expand its agent network. This year, CrowdForce wants to triple the number of active agents it has.
Read also Fawry Microfinance, Lending Arm Of Egypt’s Leading Fintech Disburses $63.6m In Four Years
“We are excited to lead this investment in CrowdForce. We see significant value in the product as it is solving a real problem by providing access to critical financial services in rural areas that have been overlooked by traditional financial institutions. CrowdForce is actively deepening financial inclusion through its products and services, and has unique competitive advantages through its proprietary technology and extensive agent distribution network across the country,” said Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, Aruwa Capital founder and managing partner.
A Look At What CrowdForce Does
CrowdForce was founded in 2018 after a pivot and relaunch by Oluwatomi and Damilola Ayorinde, who founded Mobile Forms in 2015 as a data analytics platform that provides insights on hard-to-reach rural and semi-peri urban communities.
Read also Egyptian Super-API For Payments MoneyHash Lands $3m Pre-seed
The company has created a financial services distribution technology that can quickly transform any merchant into a mobile bank branch. Data analytics are used to create financial service offerings that truly address financial inclusion. Its PayForce product is a point-of-sale (PoS)-enabled system that offers ATM, transfer, and bill payment services.
It also intends to provide more point-of-sale terminals to small businesses that operate as mobile bank branches, such as petrol stations, pharmacies, and aggregators/resellers. Since 2020, CrowdForce has been cash positive and has served 1.9 million unique consumers across 25 Nigerian states.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer