$3.6 M pre-Series A funding received by Nigerian agency banking startup CrowdForce
CrowdForce, a Nigerian agency banking platform sponsored by Y Combinator, has secured US $3.6 million in a pre-Series A fundraising round to triple its PayForce agent network this year and expand its financial service services to neglected Nigerian communities.
CrowdForce was born in 2018 after a pivot and relaunch by Oluwatomi and Damilola Ayorinde, who founded Mobile Forms in 2015 as a data analytics platform that provides insights on hard-to-reach rural and semi-peri urban communities.
The company has created a financial services distribution technology that can quickly transform any merchant into a mobile bank branch. Data analytics are used to create financial service offerings that really address financial inclusion. Its PayForce product is a point-of-sale (PoS)-enabled system that offers ATM, transfer, and bill payment services.
Aruwa Capital Management led the US $3.6 million pre-Series A investment, which was divided between stock and debt and included HAVAC and AAIC. CrowdForce plans to use the funds to grow its personnel, regional operations, and marketing efforts in order to expand its agent network. This year, CrowdForce wants to triple the number of active agents it has.
It also intends to provide additional point-of-sale terminals to small companies, such as petrol stations, pharmacies, and aggregators/resellers, so that they may operate as mobile bank branches. Since 2020, CrowdForce has been cash positive and has served 1.9 million unique consumers across 25 Nigerian states.
“Fintechs and challenger banks are emerging in Africa to deliver better financial services via digital rails. It’s a fantastic development in the market, but cash is clearly still king in Nigeria. Ninety-seven per cent of retail transactions happen offline. There is a clear need to build an offline distribution network to enable fintechs and challengers to reach the mass market – this is exactly what we’re doing at CrowdForce, and this round will accelerate our momentum even more,” said Oluwatomi Ayorinde, CrowdForce’s CEO and co-founder.
“We are excited to lead this investment in CrowdForce. We see significant value in the product as it is solving a real problem by providing access to critical financial services in rural areas that have been overlooked by traditional financial institutions. CrowdForce is actively deepening financial inclusion through its products and services, and has unique competitive advantages through its proprietary technology and extensive agent distribution network across the country,” said Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes, Aruwa Capital founder and managing partner.
