To expand product offerings, $2.4 M Seed funding secured by Nigerian embedded finance platform Anchor
Anchor, a pan-African provider of banking as a service (BaaS), based in Nigeria, has raised US $2.4 million in a seed funding round to launch new products, improve its infrastructure for licensing and compliance, and assess potential growth markets.
When it debuts in August 2022, Anchor will have streamlined the years-long process of developing banking products into a matter of days. With the aid of regulated banking partners, Anchor’s APIs let its users create bank accounts, issue cards, send and receive payments without any problems, and provide savings and investment products.
The Y Combinator alumnus Anchor has now disclosed its seed round, one year after emerging from stealth with a US $1 million pre-seed round and some early customers. Goat Capital led the US $2.4 million investment, which also included 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.
With revenue increasing 30% month over month (MoM), Anchor has reached over US $550 million in annualized total transaction volume (TTV), and its clientele includes SeamlessHR, Bujeti, Zit, Penne, and LifeBank. The company recently announced a partnership with MTN MoMo PSB, Nigeria’s largest telecom company in Africa, whose fintech division it claims will help it surpass its prior growth rates.
“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.”
The embedded finance market in Africa is still in its infancy but is expanding quickly, according to Justin Kan, partner at Goat Capital.
“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.
