PalmPay Secures $40m Seed Capital to Launch in Nigeria

• PalmPay Secures $40m Seed Capital to Launch in Nigeria

PalmPay, an Africa-focused payment startup, launched in Nigeria after raising $40 million from Chinese mobile phone manufacturer, Transsion.

The $40 million seed fund was raised from Tecno, Transsion’s subsidiary operating across Africa, and the likes of Chinese NetEase and Mediatek, a wireless comms hardware company, the company revealed.

Greg Reeves, PalmPay CEO, said the company can compete effectively in Nigeria and across Africa based on its strategic partnership.

He said PalmPay partnership with Tecno, Infinix and Itel includes pre-installation of the company’s app on about 20 million smartphones in 2020.

“On channel and access, we’re going to be pre-installed on all Tecno phones. Your’e gonna find us in the Tecno stores and outlets. So we get an immediate channel and leg up in any market we operate in,” said Reeve.

PalmPay received its mobile money operator license from the Central Bank of Nigeria in July 2019. Since then it has registered 100,000 users and processed 1 million transactions.

The company will offer 10 percent cash back on airtime purchases and charge as low as N10 as bank transfer fees.

PalmPay plans to use the $40 million to grow operations in Ghana and other African countries in 2020.