Nigerian fintech startup Wallets Africa has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from a host of investors as it prepares to expand usage of its product to more African countries.
Founded in 2018, Wallets Africa allows people and companies to send and receive money, and make payments, using their phone numbers.
The startup took part in the Y Combinator accelerator last year, and the programme’s chief executive officer (CEO) Michael Seibel is among the investors in this latest round which also includes Samurai Incubate Africa, Mozilla Corporation, Brad Flora, Friale Fund, 9 Yards Capital, Venture Souq, Maria Alegre, Zach and Noah Cohen, and Radu Spineau.
Wallets Africa founder and CEO John Oke said the startup recently began supporting businesses, allowing them to perform bulk payments, issue wallets and make payroll, and currently has over 1,400 businesses signed up.
It will be using the round to provide corporate banking services to businesses in Nigeria and add more transfer destinations to its product.
“We’ve vastly improved what a digital wallet could do. Back in the day existing wallets could only pay bills, buy airtime and do money transfers. Now in addition to those, people can generate physical and virtual cards with our wallets, they can continue using the wallet when they travel to more wallet-native countries like Ghana, Kenya and very soon more countries on the continent,” Oke said.
“Last December, we rolled out international transfers to mobile money wallets and agents in Ghana for Nigerians travelling down there for Afronation and the Year of Return celebrations. Since then we’ve added Kenya and we’ll be looking to add up to 10 destinations by the end of this year.”
