Nigerian e-commerce company Konga has completed the acquisition of Zinternet Nigeria, with Konga now owning Zinternet’s mobile money licence as a result.
Konga said in a press release the deal has been finalised upon consent from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and that the acquisition of a mobile money licence will allow the startup to offer payment solutions to merchants on and off the Konga.com platform.
“We are excited to work with our banking partners to extend the reach of their services in driving the adoption of cashless payment solutions,” said Konga chief executive officer (CEO) Sim Shagaya.
“As merchants ourselves, we know firsthand the frictions involved in transactions processing and we look forward to exploring how our banking partnerships could eliminate this friction not just for Konga, but also for SMEs around the country.”
Konga opened up its platform to SMEs in April of last year and enabled them to sell alongside Konga, with over 15,000 small businesses now trading on the Konga.com domain.
In October of last year Konga secured an undisclosed amount of further funding, thought to be in the region of US$40 million to US$60 million; while in January 2014 the company raised US$25 million in Series B funding from Naspers and Kinnevik.
Disrupt Africa reported in November of last year Konga opened a new engineering centre in Yaba, Lagos, which the company said was necessitated by the growth of its software development team.
The startup also announced the opening of an secondary engineering centre in Cape Town, South Africa; with plans to establishment a knowledge exchange programme between the two hubs.
