Nigeria’s Anchor, a pan-African Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider, has raised a US$2.4 million seed funding round to launch new products, invest in its licensing and compliance infrastructure, and evaluate expansion markets.
Launched in August 2022, Anchor simplifies the process of building banking products, shortening it from years to days. In partnership with regulated banking institutions, Anchor’s APIs enable its customers to generate bank accounts, issue cards, make and receive payments seamlessly, and offer savings and investment products.
A year after coming out of stealth with a US$1 million pre-seed round and some early customers, the Y Combinator alumni Anchor has now announced its seed round. The US$2.4 million investment was led by Goat Capital, with participation from FoundersX, Rebel Fund, Y Combinator and Byld Ventures, which had led the pre-seed round.
“We are thrilled to have gathered such strong support from investors who share our vision of expanding access to financial choices through BaaS and embedded finance. This has been a significant journey for the Anchor team after our pre-seed raise last year. We have grown tremendously and increased our impact across various clients and customer segments in Africa,” said Segun Adeyemi, CEO and co-founder of Anchor.
Anchor has hit over US$550 million in annualised total transaction volume (TTV), with revenue growing 30 per cent month-on-month (MoM) and a clientele that includes SeamlessHR, Bujeti, Zit, Penne, and LifeBank. Recently, the company signed a partnership with the fintech arm of Africa’s largest telecom in Nigeria, MTN MoMo PSB, which it says will see it dwarf its previous growth numbers.
“It’s no news that companies of all kinds are embedding financial products into their offerings and we have seen this play out over the last few years in Africa. At Anchor, we are going beyond just offering these banking APIs to our customers. But also empowering them with insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and financial trends that will enable them to serve their customers better,” says Adeyemi. “This funding allows us to build out complementary parts of our core BaaS platform, strengthen our compliance infrastructure and offer other value-added services.”
Justin Kan, partner at Goat Capital, said the embedded finance market in Africa was nascent, but growing fast.
“Anchor’s growth rate is impressive and showing signs of becoming the category leader, which is something we look out for in our portfolio companies. We are excited to partner with Segun and the team to leverage BaaS solutions to create financial prosperity for the continent,” he said.
