By Adedapo Adesanya
Pan-African Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider, Anchor, has announced its seed raise of $2.4 million to launch new products, invest in its licensing and compliance infrastructure, and evaluate expansion markets.
The round was led by Goat Capital, with participation from FoundersX, Rebel Fund, and others, including Y Combinator. Byld Ventures, who led the pre-seed, also participated in the seed round.
The funds raised will be allocated towards investing in its licensing and compliance infrastructure, launching its new products, and researching expansion markets.
This will help Anchor realise its mission to drive financial access and prosperity by empowering more participants to enter the digital financial services space without the need for costly infrastructure development or regulatory concerns.
Speaking on the fresh funds, Mr Segun Adeyemi, CEO and co-founder of Anchor, said, “This funding allows us to build out complementary parts of our core BaaS platform, strengthen our compliance infrastructure, and offer other value-added services.”
“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,” he added.
Mr Adeyemi explained that, “At Anchor, we are going beyond just offering these banking APIs to our customers. But also empowering them with insights into customer behaviours, preferences, and financial trends that will enable them to serve their customers better.”
On his part, Regarding their investment in Anchor, Mr Justin Kan, Partner at Goat Capital, says, “The embedded finance market in Africa is nascent but growing fast at over 30 per cent CAGR. Anchor’s growth rate is impressive and showing signs of becoming the category leader, which 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.”
In just a year since the company was founded, it said that over $550 million in annualized total transaction volume (TTV), with revenue growing 30 per cent month-on-month (MoM) and a clientele that includes SeamlessHR, Bujeti, Zit, Penne, and LifeBank.
Recently, the company signed a partnership with the fintech arm of MTN, MoMo PSB, which is set to dwarf its previous growth numbers.
Aduragbemi Omiyale