Swipe, a Nigerian fintech startup, has acquired US$500,000 in pre-seed capital this year in order to broaden access to its numerous credit offerings.
Swipe, a credit-focused tech startup founded in 2020, powers businesses in Africa by providing credit solutions to support business growth and expansion through credit purchasing.
Its objective is to increase credit card adoption through its Cards as a Service (CAAS) product by collaborating with employers, and to enable flexible payments at checkout points across Africa through its BNPL product.
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“Our BNPL model onboards merchants onto our platform and allows users to buy now and pay later using a Swipe Card while our CAAS model onboards organisations and companies as partners to assist with the management, funding, and tracking of field expenses incurred by employees using Swipe Cards. On the CAAS model, employees are allowed flexible access to up to 50 per cent of their earned salary via Swipe Card,” Temidayo Dauda, CEO of Swipe, told Disrupt Africa.
“Considering the Nigerian economy, we spotted that people in Nigeria need more flexible ways of making payments for products and services. People had to wait till payday or borrow from friends to pay for their needs. We noticed this and decided to find a solution to help our target users get their needs at the moment while spreading the payments over a scheduled time interval.”
Swipe teamed with Flutterwave in 2020 to provide card services to users. Customers were constrained from conducting purchases on platforms that did not accept Flutterwave’s Rave, thus the team had to move on to a more adaptable card service. Swipe was able to begin the installation of MasterCard services in December 2021, allowing users to obtain more access to a large pool of merchants.
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This year, the business acquired US$500,000 in pre-seed capital to help it develop, and it has also formed relationships with Interswitch and Providus MasterCard. Dauda stated that it was in the midst of finalising new agreements with several prominent e-commerce companies. All of this is aimed at increasing adoption and moving into new areas.
“We believe that this trajectory will drive credit card adoption beyond individuals and improve the overall perception of credit purchases across the country,” said Dauda.
“We have an objective of shipping this solution across Africa soon, but at the moment, we’re first building confidence in the use of our BNPL and CAAS products across Nigeria.”
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Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh