Nigerian fintech startup LemFi has raised a US$53 million Series B round of funding to help it build out its product offering and become a full-stack financial services hub for immigrants globally.
Founded by Ridwan Olalere and Rian Cochran in 2021 as Lemonade Finance, before a 2023 rebrand, LemFi is an international remittance and payments platform that enables diaspora communities in Europe and North America to move money reliably and affordably to emerging markets, including China, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Since its launch, LemFi has grown to over one million customers and recently crossed US$1 billion in monthly transaction volume, and it is now set for further growth after raising US$53 million in Series B funding led by Highland Europe with participation from previous investors Left Lane Capital, Palm Drive Capital, Endeavor Catalyst and Y Combinator.
The new round brings LemFi’s total capital raised to US$85 million to date, and will be utilised to help LemFi provide further services and features to build a full-stack financial services hub for immigrants globally.
LemFi will also use the funds to scale its payment network licenses and partnerships to provide hyper-localised service, and hire talent globally to support its next growth stage.
“When we started building LemFi, we were told remittance had already been solved. But for too many people, it is still too slow, cumbersome and expensive with customers telling us that in some instances it was cheaper to send money from the US via Canada than directly to their families back home. By targeting the communities most in need, we’ve built LemFi into the go-to remittance service for one million people, supporting them in building wealth across 20 countries,” Olalere said.
“We’re not stopping there: this new funding will support us in our mission to build the financial services hub for immigrants globally from adding new features to expanding to new countries. We’re delighted to be partnering with Highland to help us scale LemFi into a fintech giant.”
Sam Brooks, partner at Highland Europe, said LemFi’s mission to provide trusted, reliable access to financial services for immigrant communities had inspired an incredibly loyal customer base and generated impressive growth over the past several years.
“In addition to the success in initial geographies, we are excited by LemFi’s continuing international expansion given the extent of the global problem they are solving. Ridwan and Rian are fantastic leaders, and we are thrilled to partner with them and the LemFi team to help them scale and continue their growth into new markets,” he said.
