Nigeria’s leading mobile banking startup, Kuda Bank, raised N25 million in a Series A round led by Valar Ventures, a company founded by Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first investor and co-founder of Paypal.
Other investors were Target Global, an international venture capital firm headquartered in Berlin and several other existing investors.
Kuda Bank said the new fund will be used to increase customer acquisition, expand leadership roles, and build out new features including a new easy-to-use lending option that the company is currently trailing with select customers.
According to Babs Ogundeyi, the co-founder and CEO, Kuda Bank was doing $500 million in transactions per month in the month of November and did $2.2 billion.
“In November we were doing about $500 million in transactions per month,” Ogundeyi said, for services like bill payments, card transactions and phone top-ups. “We closed February at $2.2 billion.”
In December 2020, Kuda Bank raised $10 million in a seed round, the largest seed round by a startup out of Africa.
Babs Ogundeyi, CEO and co-founder of Kuda, said: “At Kuda, we know that the companies which are best able to leverage technology and talent will be the same companies which are best positioned to provide huge numbers of people across Africa with access to a vastly improved financial system that places the customer at its center. We recognize the great strides that we have taken to get to the point at which we are now, but even more importantly we recognize just how far we still have to go to achieve our objective of providing every African with access to powerful, appropriate and affordable financial services.
“With this in mind, we could not be more pleased that Valar Ventures has decided to come on board and join us on this mission. Their insights and experience in helping advise some of the world’s most successful challenger banks will without doubt be a critical part of our successes going forward.”
Andrew McCormack, a general partner, and co-founder at Valar noted that “Nigeria is at a tipping point in the adoption of digital banking, With the rapidly growing, youthful population who are open to new financial alternatives, Kuda is well-positioned to benefit and will transform the landscape of African banking. We are excited to lead their Series A and continue on the journey alongside Kuda.”
Nigeria’s fintech startups are raising huge money, an indication of a growing sector. Flutterwave recently raised $170 million at a valuation of $1 billion to join Jumia and Interswitch as a unicorn.