By Adedapo Adesanya
Top Nigerian digital financial platform, Carbon, has revealed that its revenue for the year 2019 grew by 68.8 percent to N6.3 billion from N3.73 billion that it published in the preceding 2018.
This was contained in its recently released 2019 financial statements, where the firm also said the increase was as a result of its loan disbursement, which rose by 76.9 percent to N23.1 billion from N13 billion disbursed in 2018.
Carbon noted that its high growth was driven by its expansion into East African market of Kenya, adding that the added exposure gave it access to more Africans.
In 2019, Carbon noted that it disbursed over 975,000 loans which also saw improvement as it rolled out a loan top-up feature that allowed customers with active loans to access additional credit when needed. This boosted its revenue as it recorded over 25,000 loans top-up.
The expenses incurred by Carbon also increased last year by 60.9 percent from N3.5 billion in 2018 to over N5.6 billion.
The huge cost reported by the company affected its profit after tax, which went down by 23.7 percent to N112.6 million in 2019 as against the N147.2 million achieved in 2018.
To help customers make money, the firm introduced a one-time investment feature that allowed users to create an investment plan with as low as N100. At the end of 2019, Carbon users had invested a total of N2.8 billion.
Carbon, in addition, gave customers free bill payments along with cheaper transfers and fast transaction, more customers used the Carbon app for their payment services. This resulted in the number of transaction on the app increasing 23 times more than that of 2018. In total, 5.5 million bill payments worth about N51 billion were processed using Carbon
The company noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has led the company to reschedule loans for customers who have problems with repayments due to financial difficulties. It also added that it has been helping customers with about N20,000 in health benefits.
Carbon also announced its Disrupt Fund, a $100,000 Pan-African fund to address the lack of capital for African tech startups.
This year it is also making plans to introduce virtual and physical debit cards as well as a reward program for loyal customers and SME accounts for entrepreneurs.
