Diool raises $3.5m in funding

Cameroon: Cameroonian fintech startup Diool raised US$3.5 million in funding to scale operations.

Diool started life as a mobile recharge project back in 2015, offering small merchants a way to sell prepaid recharges to their customers from a single app, but eventually pivoted into financial services aggregation after realizing payment interchanges and financial services access was the pain point of its target users.

The startup’s platform makes it simpler for small merchants to accept payments from their customers and repay their suppliers, using many payment methods. In the two years since the pivot, Diool has signed up more than 2,000 merchants, who have transacted more than US$120 million via its platform. It has payments integrations with all mobile money providers in Cameroon, and a regulatory partnership with French multinational investment bank and financial services company Societe Generale.

Diool has now announced it has raised US$3.5 million in funding from the Lundin family plus existing investors, taking its total secured investment to US$4.6 million. The startup’s chief executive officer (CEO) Serge Boupda told Disrupt Africa its goal was to build a simpler way to access financial services for small merchants in Africa.

“We’re doing Cameroon and payments first,” said Serge Boupda CEO of Diool. “We’ve also spent some time rebuilding operational architecture and processes, to match new payments regulations in Cameroon – a critical building block for financial services distribution in the region.”

With the funding on board, Diool is now working on expanding at home, before raising further funding and scaling internationally.

“Our next stage is growing the team and product to scale in Cameroon ahead of entering other countries,” Boupda said.