The South African Banking as a Service (BaaS) and embedded finance enabler Ukheshe has partnered with Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) to provide an innovative BaaS platform in East Africa.
Ukheshe is a leading fintech enablement partner, with a legacy in enterprise platform delivery of embedded finance. It has created an extensive range of micro-services that enable rapid digital transaction propositions for clients.
BaaS, the provision of banking products and services through third-party distributors, is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of a whopping 25 per cent in some markets, and this new partnership between Ukheshe and DTB will see both parties “get ahead of this rapid growth curve”.
Ukheshe Technologies CEO Clayton Hayward
Mark Dankworth, president of business development at Ukheshe Africa, said the company was thrilled to partner with DTB as a progressive bank that shared its vision for BaaS.
“Ukheshe had been looking for a banking partner in the region, and when we met with DTB to explore these opportunities, several synergies immediately came to light. When I first met Jamie (Loden), the COO of DTB, he said, “We are striving to be a technology company with a banking licence”. I knew then that we had the technology and DTB had the licence. We’re extremely excited to enable DTB to launch some innovative endeavours within the East African market,” he said.
Loden said the market was ready for new offers.
“Consumers are becoming more aware of the options in the market and are starting to favour convenience over cost. This creates new opportunities for agile BaaS models,” he 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
Maplerad, a Nigerian fintech touted as a global Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider targeting Africa, has secured $6 million in initial investment. According to insiders, Maplerad, which is emerging from stealth, raised the round at a $30 million value.
After Kuda and Yellow Card, the Peter Thiel-founded venture capital firm led Maplerad’s seed round. Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Michael Vaughn (ex-COO, Venmo), Fintech Fund, Babs Ogundeyi (CEO, Kuda), Armyn Capital, Dunbar Capital, Strawhat Investment, Polymath Capital, Unpopular Ventures, Sean Mahsoul, and MyAsiaVC are among the other investors in the round. The founders stated that they also put money into the firm.
The startup intends to utilise the funding to gain more clients now that it is no longer in stealth mode, obtain further licences, increase its personnel, and strengthen its footprint across Africa.
While in stealth mode, Maplerad handled millions of dollars every month for over 100 firms added to its platform, including startups like Pastel, Spleet, Bridgecard, Onboardly, Vella, Crowdforce, Dojah, GetEquity, and a few banks.
Maplerad founders cited the platform’s “wider variety of banking partnerships,” “second-to-none technology,” and “best institutional investors/partners,” as its competitive advantages.
Speaking about the investment, James Fitzgerald, a partner at Valar Ventures, said that while the continent’s economies are maturing, “there’s a huge opportunity for Maplerad, which is the best-in-class banking as a service solution to provide businesses with the financial infrastructure to scale across Africa and globally quickly and seamlessly.”
Maplerad’s history can be traced back to 2020, when the company’s first product, Wirepay, was released. The software began by assisting users in making international payments by providing cross-border payment alternatives in both fiat and cryptocurrency. It has subsequently evolved into a self-described all-in-one finance platform, allowing users to receive, hold, and make payments in many currencies, as well as create virtual and real cards and pay bills. Miracle Anywanwu and Obinna Chukwujioke created the company.
Wirepay raised an unknown pre-seed round last year, including a $125,000 check from OnDeck. Other investors in the round included Golden Palm Investments Corporation, Greenhouse Capital, certain Stash executives, and Berrywood Capital.
Anywanwu stated that as Wirepay grew to over 50,000 customers, primarily in Nigeria, businesses began to question about the in-house technology underpinning the services on its consumer app.
“People wanted to use the infrastructure powering Wirepay, our license coverages, and banking relationships,” the CEO and CTO stated.
Anywanwu further claimed that Maplerad (the parent firm) has always sought to sell this infrastructure to other companies. However, after receiving a flood of outside demands, they agreed to beta-launch Maplerad, the infra product that lets enterprises to incorporate strong financial services such as accounts, payments, FX, and cards into their products, this August.
“From day one, when we built Wirepay for our consumers, we knew the end move would be infrastructural even though we didn’t start the business infrastructure first. For anyone to build anything finance-related, they have a whole lot of banking stack that they have to start with and even before integrating features, they have to go past many hurdles,” said the chief executive. “One of them is banking relationships and compliance. The other is licencing. So Maplerad is solving financial infrastructure problems for these businesses in Africa. We handle that whole stack and provide the best-in-class APIs to use that can make you launch a financial product within five minutes. So instead of a company spending 8 months and a couple of million dollars to start building a fintech product, you can integrate with our APIs and go live.”
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
Anchor, a Nigerian fintech firm offering banking as a service, has secured $1 million in pre-seed investment.
Byld Ventures, Y Combinator, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and angel investors like SeamlessHR CEO Emmanuel Okeleji support the BaaS fintech.
The Y Combinator-backed business intends to utilise this funding to hire top people, upgrade its technological foundation, invest in compliance and regulatory infrastructure, and gain new clients.
The fintech sector experience of the co-founder, Segun Adeyemi, seems to have persuaded investors. Adeyemi had previously co-founded Amplifypay, a business that specialised in recurring payments and direct debit in 2015. Amplifypay was bought by Carbon, one of the biggest digital banks in Africa, in 2019. He also worked with JUMO, the largest provider of credit infrastructure in Africa, between 2019 and 2021. He equally provided advice to some of Nigeria’s largest fintech companies and digital banks during this time.
But the investors seem equally to have been drawn in by the startup’s traction. According to Anchor, monthly revenue is increasing by 200% while it transacts several million dollars. The startup generates income by collecting fees and taking a portion of every billable service provided, including account opening, money transfers, savings, and deposits.
As the first banking-as-a-service platform from the continent, Anchor, which was also accepted into Y Combinator’s summer batch this year, launched its private beta in May. It was accessible by more than 30 startups, including Pennee, Pivo (another YC S22-backed business) Outpost Health, and Dillali.
Anchor CEO, Adeyemi. Credits: Anchor
A Look At What The Startup Does
Founded in February 2022 by Segun Adeyemi, Olamide Sobowale, and Gbekeloluwa Olufotebi, Anchor provides APIs, dashboards, and tools that help developers embed and build banking products such as bank accounts, funds transfers, savings products, issuing cards, and offering loans., Anchor provides APIs, dashboards and tools that help developers embed and build banking products such as bank accounts, funds transfers, savings products, issuing cards and offering loans.
“After months of building and talking to our early customers, we are excited to be coming out of private beta and launching our public beta with a pre-seed round led by Byld Ventures. Also, we got into Y Combinator Summer 2022 batch as the first banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform from Africa. At Anchor, we provide API and tools for businesses to create accounts, transfer funds, offer savings, issue cards, and do more for their customers. This enables them to grow revenues by offering and embedding financial services within their products,” Segun Adeyemi said.
“We’re now seeing a new development where businesses want to offer different products and financial services beyond just payments. We strongly believe that the way is not just by latching banking-as-a-service on a payments platform, but there has to be proper banking as a service platform built with the right infrastructure and go-to-market strategy. That’s the problem we decided to solve as a team, basically the full end-to-end infrastructure for startups to be able to build, embed, and launch financial services.”
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
