ImpactAlpha, April 4 – Kudi launched in Nigeria in 2017 to make access to financial services easier for smartphone users. It has raised $5.8 million in Series A funding. Venture capital firm Partech led the round. Existing investors Khosla Ventures and Y Combinator also participated.
The San Francisco-based company operates a mobile banking and payments platform based on messenger services. “Why we chose Messaging? Distribution. Nobody wants a new mobile app,” founder Yinka Adewale wrote on Medium. What made more sense to him was layering payments on top of commonly used messaging services like Facebook messenger or Skype.
Kudi partners with utility, telecom and financial services providers to allow messenger users to make bill payments and money transfers and buy mobile phone credit. As of December, it was handling 700,000 transactions per month, up from 28,000 at the start of 2018.
Kudi was a Y Combinator graduate in 2017.
Partech, Kudi’s lead investor for this round, launched its Partech Africa fund last year to invest in growth-stage African tech companies.
