Economy
Investors Provide Funding Support to Promote Pay with Klump
By Adedapo Adesanya
To further establish the buy now pay later (BNPL) model in Nigeria, Lagos-based startup, Klump, has raised a $780,000 pre-seed funding round to help it launch its flagship product with select partners, offering BNPL solutions to customers and businesses.
The new product name Pay with Klump will use the company’s proprietary credit eligibility and fraud detection engine to make an informed credit decision on a customer in less than three minutes, with a goal to further reduce the decision time to less than a minute.
The pre-seed funding round was led by London-based investment firm Seedcamp, with participation from MAGIC Fund, Voltron Capital, Yellowwood, Kickoff Africa, Hoaq Capital, Kesho VC, Assembly Investors, as well as several angel investors and founders.
These big names include Mr Olugbenga ‘GB’ Agboola, CEO of Flutterwave; Will Neale, founder of Grabyo; Mr Michael Pennington, founder of Gumtree; Mr Richmond Bassey, CEO of Bamboo; Mr Babs Ogundeyi, CEO of Kuda Bank; Mr Abdul Hassan, CEO of Mono; Mr Opeyemi Awoyemi; and Ms Selma Ribica.
The funding will be used for further developing Klump’s credit decision and checkout engine, building the team, developing merchant partnerships, and offering affordable financing to its customers.
Speaking on this, the co-founder of the company Ms Celestine Omin said, “Our BNPL offering is a natural next step in the development of the African e-commerce sector, and we intend to be at the forefront by developing the capability to make credit decisions on customers in real-time and offer flexible payments to help reduce the economic pressure of one-time payment which has grown astronomically since the emergence of COVID-19.”
“At the same time, we want to help merchants achieve commercial prosperity by providing the tools to offer their customers the option to pay in small instalments,” Ms Omin noted.
On his part, the co-founder, Mr Olufunbi Falayi said Klump can quickly make sound credit eligibility decisions, facilitate transactions to approved customers, make disbursements to merchants, and effectively drive collections from customers with a flexible and efficient collections system.
“We are keeping mechanisms in place to ensure we promote responsible lending and reduce the risk of customers taking loans they cannot pay back,” he said.
Mr Felix Martinez, an investor at Seedcamp, said he was thrilled to be backing Klump as it laid the backbone in democratising new payment methods across a hugely under-served African market.
“It was clear to us from our first meeting that their respective experiences scaling some of Africa’s largest startup successes and implementing best-in-class payment solutions for large e-commerce merchants makes them the perfect team to become the responsible BNPL category leader on the continent,” he said.
Klump has also partnered with AltSchool, an alternative tech academic institution, to provide laptop financing to its students, as well as with Betastore, a B2B retail platform, to provide inventory financing to its retail customers.
Klump will also be rolling out other large-scale partnerships over the next few weeks with an initial focus on marketplaces with higher-margin, discretionary-spend categories, such as apparel and footwear, fitness, accessories, and beauty. Klump will also focus on the education, travel and healthcare industry verticals.
Founded in 2021 by Ms Celestine Omin and Mr Olufunbi Falayi, who have combined experience building products with Konga, DealDay, Paystack, Andela, Amazon and H-E-B, Klump offers customers the option to buy and receive their purchases right away and spread the payments over four equal instalments.
By Dipo Olowookere
Investors at the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) Limited have continued to show excitement for the full-year earnings of companies on the exchange so far.
On Friday, Customs Street further appreciated by 1.01 per cent as more organization released their financial statements for the 2025 fiscal year.
During the session, traders continued their selective trading strategy, with the energy sector going up by 2.47 per cent at the close of business despite profit-taking in the banking counter, which saw its index down by 0.11 per cent.
Yesterday, the insurance space grew by 2.16 per cent, the industrial goods segment expanded by 1.70 per cent, and the consumer goods industry jumped by 0.42 per cent.
Consequently, the All-Share Index (ASI) increased by 1,722.13 points to 171,727.49 points from 170,005.36 points, and the market capitalisation soared by N1.106 trillion to N110.235 trillion from the N109.129 trillion it ended on Thursday.
Business Post reports that there were 59 appreciating stocks and 19 depreciating stocks on Friday, representing a positive market breadth index and strong investor sentiment.
The trio of Omatek, Deap Capital, and NAHCO gained 10.00 per cent each to sell for N2.64, N6.82, and N136.40 apiece, as Zichis and Austin Laz appreciated by 9.98 per cent each to close at N6.72 and N5.40, respectively.
Conversely, The Initiates depreciated by 9.74 per cent to N19.45, DAAR Communications slumped by 7.32 per cent to N1.90, United Capital crashed by 6.55 per cent to N18.55, Coronation Insurance lost 5.71 per cent to quote at N3.30, and First Holdco shrank by 5.53 per cent to N47.00.
The activity chart showed an improvement in the activity level, with the trading volume, value, and number of deals up by 33.77 per cent, 93.27 per cent, and 10.63 per cent, respectively.
This was because traders transacted 953.8 million shares worth N43.1 billion in 51,005 deals compared with the 713.0 million shares valued at N22.3 billion traded in 46,104 deals a day earlier.
Fidelity Bank was the most active with 92.4 million units sold for N1.8 billion, Chams transacted 69.2 million units valued at N310.9 million, Deap Capital exchanged 59.1 million units worth N382.7 million, Access Holdings traded 57.2 million units valued at N1.3 billion, and Tantalizers transacted 48.6 million units worth N228.2 million.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The value of the Naira contracted against the United States Dollar on Friday by 13 Kobo or 0.01 per cent to N1,366.19/$1 in the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEX) from the previous day’s value of N1,366.06/$1.
According to data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian currency also depreciated against the Pound Sterling in the same market window yesterday by N2.37 to N1,857.75/£1 from the N1,855.38/£1 it was traded on Thursday, and further depleted against the Euro by 57 Kobo to close at N1,612.52/€1 versus the preceding session’s N1,611.95/€1.
In the same vein, the exchange rate for international transactions on the GTBank Naira card showed that the Naira lost N8 on the greenback yesterday to N1,383/$1 from the previous day’s N1,375/$1 and at the black market, the Nigerian currency maintained stability against the Dollar at N1,450/$1.
FX analysts anticipate this trend to persist, primarily influenced by increasing external reserves, renewed inflows of foreign portfolio investments, and a reduction in speculative demand.
In the short term, stability in the FX market is expected to continue, supported by policy interventions and improving market confidence.
Nigeria’s foreign reserves experienced an upward trajectory, increasing by $632.38 million within the week to $46.91 billion from $46.27 billion in the previous week.
The Dollar appreciation this week appears to be largely technical, serving as a correction to the substantial losses experienced from mid- to late January.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market slightly appreciated, with Bitcoin (BTC) climbing near $68,000, up nearly 5 per cent since hitting $60,000 late on Thursday after investor confidence in crypto’s utility as a store of value, inflation hedge, and digital currency faltered.
The sell-off extended beyond crypto, with silver plunging 15 per cent and gold sliding more than 2 per cent. US stocks also fell.
The latest recoup saw the price of BTC up by 4.7 per cent to $67,978.96, as Ethereum (ETH) appreciated by 6.3 per cent to $2,021.10, and Ripple (XRP) surged by 9.5 per cent to $1.42.
In addition, Solana (SOL) grew by 7.3 per cent to $85.22, Cardano (ADA) added 6.1 per cent to trade at $0.2683, Dogecoin (DOGE) expanded by 5.4 per cent to $0.0958, Litecoin (LTC) rose by 5.2 per cent to $53.50, and Binance Coin (BNB) jumped by 2.3 per cent to $637.79, while the US Dollar Tether (USDT) and the US Dollar Coin (USDC) traded flat at $1.00 each.
By Adedapo Adesanya
Oil prices settled higher on Friday as traders worried that this week’s talks between the US and Iran had failed to reduce the risk of a military conflict between the two countries.
Brent crude futures traded at $68.05 a barrel after going up by 50 cents or 0.74 per cent, and the US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures finished at $63.55 a barrel due to the addition of 26 cents or 0.41 per cent.
Iran and the US held negotiations in Muscat, the capital of Oman, on Friday to overcome sharp differences over Iran’s nuclear programme.
It was reported that the talks had ended with Iran’s foreign minister saying negotiators will return to their capitals for consultations and the talks will continue.
Regardless, the meeting kept investors anxious about geopolitical risk, as Iran wanted to stick to nuclear issues while the US wanted to discuss Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for armed groups in the region.
Any escalation of tension between the two nations could disrupt oil flows, since about a fifth of the world’s total consumption passes through the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq export most of their crude via the strait, as does Iran, which is a member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
According to Reuters, Iran objected to the presence of any US Central Command (CENTCOM) or other regional military officials, saying that would jeopardise the process.
The current confrontation was sparked by more than two weeks of unrest in Iran that saw authorities launch a deadly crackdown that killed thousands of civilians and shocked the world. As reports of the deaths trickled out of Iran, US President Donald Trump threatened to strike Iran if any of the tens of thousands of protesters arrested were executed.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan’s planned oil exports could fall by as much as 35 per cent this month via its main route through Russia, as the country’s top oil company, Tengiz oilfield, slowly recovers from fires at power facilities in January.
ING analysts have pointed out Iran’s neighbour, Iraq, and a disagreement with the US as another bullish factor for oil prices. It seems Iraqi politicians favour Mr Nouri al-Maliki as the country’s next Prime Minister, but the US thinks Mr al-Maliki is too close to Iran. President Trump has already threatened the oil producer with consequences if he emerges as PM.
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