South African Crypto Firm Luno Crosses 10m Customer Threshold

Marius Reitz, Luno’s GM for Africa

Luno, a global crypto company with a presence in 40 countries, has surpassed the ten million customer threshold.

Luno claims that the company’s latest one million users were acquired in less than six months.

Since its inception in 2013, Luno has permitted the safe transfer of over $52 billion in cryptocurrency, and its customers have stored in excess of $1 billion.

Marius Reitz, Luno’s GM for Africa
Marius Reitz, Luno’s GM for Africa

Luno’s growth has been attributed in part to the success of the South African market, which the firm describes as one of its strongest and most active.
“South Africa accounts for more than 40% of new customers added in the last six months. South Africans deposit an average of R480 when they start a Luno account and typically keep it for ten months (the longest time of all Luno markets). 82 percent of new clients who purchased cryptocurrency did so with Bitcoin, while 28% did so with Ethereum “Ethereum,” it states.

Read also Luno Adds Early-Stage Investment Arm To Crypto Platform

According to Luno, this growth is indicative of the broader crypto industry’s resiliency in the aftermath of a turbulent year.

While the crypto market has experienced volatility over the last two years, it crossed the $2 trillion milestone earlier this month.

Marius Reitz, Luno’s general manager for Africa, adds: “Since 2017, Luno’s growth has accelerated dramatically. South Africa and Nigeria, our top two locations, demonstrate the huge demand for cryptocurrency in emerging economies.”

Indonesia reported an 83 percent increase in customer growth and nearly doubled the region’s client base in the last year, indicating worldwide expansion, he adds.

Read also Crypto Platform Luno Surpasses 8 million User Mark, More Than 50% Of It From Africa

“As of March 2022, an estimated 300 million individuals globally are utilizing cryptocurrency — a statistic that is likely to expand as global markets acquire increased access to the crypto ecosystem,” says Marcus Swanepoel, CEO and co-founder of Luno.

“Luno’s goal is to introduce cryptocurrency to over a billion people by 2030, thus surpassing 10 million customers is a significant milestone that contributes to the transition toward a more just financial system.”

Luno is based in London and employs over 800 people in offices throughout the city, as well as in South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Singapore.

Luno Expeditions, the firm’s worldwide early-stage investment arm, was recently founded to promote fintech and crypto/web3 companies.

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Luno’s platform has also been expanded to include two other cryptocurrencies: Uniswap and Chainlink.

Luno crypto customer Luno crypto customer

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. 
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Luno Adds Early-Stage Investment Arm To Crypto Platform

cryptocurrency

Luno, the global cryptocurrency company has launched investment arm Luno Expeditions, which will back early-stage fintech and crypto entrepreneurs and plans to make between 200 and 300 investments per year.

Luno makes it safe and easy to buy, store and learn about cryptocurrencies, operates across 43 countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, the United States (US) and Europe, and has over nine million customers. 

The company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), has announced the launch of Luno Expeditions, a global, early-stage investment arm to support the best fintech and crypto/web3 founders on their journeys to build the next generation of financial services.

cryptocurrency
cryptocurrency

Building on DCG’s seven year track record in early-stage crypto investing, Luno Expeditions will now spearhead all of DCG’s early stage investing, at seed and pre-seed stages. Whilst in stealth mode over the past few months, it has already invested in over 20 leading crypto and fintech companies globally, including a crypto compliance solution in Israel, an NFT marketplace in the US, a bank dedicated to women in Pakistan, and a remittance solution in Tanzania.

Next, the team will scale up investments, targeting 200-300 per year, and expand the focus beyond crypto into the broader fintech space.

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“These are incredibly exciting times in cryptocurrency and the broader fintech ecosystem. We’ve got ambitious plans to build a leading fund designed around the needs of early stage founders. It will be a privilege to work with ambitious entrepreneurs from all over the world, all intent on solving problems and building the next generation of financial service companies,” said Jocelyn Cheng, who is taking on the role of CEO at Luno Expeditions.

“We know how hard it is to build a company, especially in the fintech space, and with our deep experience building, scaling and operating fintech businesses in some of the hardest markets in the world, we’re looking to support a new generation of entrepreneurs from all over the world do the same,” said Marcus Swanepoel, Luno co-founder and CEO.

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