Nigerian “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) startup CredPal has raised funding from the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund (CASF), a micro-venture capital fund that invests in early-stage startups in the Middle East and Africa.
Launched in 2018 by Fehintolu Olaogun and Olorunfemi Jegede, CredPal is a consumer credit platform that gives buyers the freedom to buy now and pay later, and helps merchants acquire more customers to increase sales.
The Y Combinator and Google-backed CredPal has over 85,000 active customers and over 4,000 onboarded merchants, and announced in March it had raised US$15 million in funding to expand its consumer credit offerings in Nigeria and scale across Africa. It has now secured further investment from the CSAF.
“This support from Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund reinforces our mission to improve the quality of life of Africans through easy access to consumer credit. My co-founder and I are very pleased to have them as investment partners and can’t wait for how much we’ll achieve together,” said Olaogun.
At launch, Cairo Angels was Egypt’s first formal network of angel investors, and since its formation it has been one of the most active early-stage investors in startups and high-growth businesses in the Middle East and Africa, with 31 investee companies across 18 different sectors.
Its syndicate fund is a micro-venture capital fund that invests in post-seed and pre-Series A startups, with a particular focus on Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. Investments announced this year include Finclusion Group, FlexPay and Nawah-Scientific.
“We couldn’t be more proud of our investment in CredPal, which is our first investment in Nigeria. Fehintolu and Olorunfemi have built an incredible fintech platform that provides credit to thousands of underserved individuals and businesses in Africa and will be expanding rapidly to other key markets, including Egypt. BNPL has proven to be a successful business model that is a compelling alternative to traditional forms of consumer credit, especially in emerging and frontier markets where credit card penetration is very low and usually unavailable to the masses,” said Aly El Shalakany, CEO of the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund.
