Nigeria-based fintech Moniepoint gains ‘unicorn’ status

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The Nigeria-based fintech Moniepoint has gained “unicorn” status after raising $110mn from investors including Google, a rare bright spot in an otherwise gloomy funding market for African technology companies.

The funding round for the nine-year-old company, which was led by the London-based private equity firm Development Partners International and supported by Google’s Africa Investment Fund, gave it a valuation of at least $1bn for the first time, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Moniepoint, which had already previously raised $55mn from investors, operates in the fast-growing fintech market in Nigeria, one of a cohort of companies providing digital financial services in Africa’s most populous nation where many still lack access to basic services including bank accounts.

Moniepoint’s chief executive Tosin Eniolorunda said that while the company would continue to invest in its home market of Nigeria, it planned to use the funds to expand into other countries in Africa.

“The opportunities that exist in Nigeria also exist in multiple countries,” Eniolorunda told the Financial Times.

“They are at different scales and levels of development; some countries are 10 to 15 years behind Nigeria and very few are ahead. We are looking at options in our toolkit and finding which ones would be the best to launch into a country and that’s the work we’re doing right now.”

The company, which the FT has ranked as one of Africa’s fastest-growing companies over the past two years, provides bank accounts for individuals and businesses, loans for its enterprise customers without onerous collateral requirements and point of sales terminals for small merchants.

Its popularity rocketed in February 2023 during an ill-fated attempt by the central bank to replace Nigeria’s currency notes, which left banks unable to cope with the demand for cash.

Moniepoint’s capital raise comes amid a wider slowdown in funding for start-ups across the continent. African start-ups attracted a total of $1.4bn in the first three quarters of the year, down 38 per cent on the same period last year, according to the funding tracker Africa: the Big Deal.

Analysts said that higher interest rates from western central banks — particularly in the US where much of African tech funding comes from — had contributed to a slowdown in fundraising as investors cut their appetite for risk.

Osarumen Osamuyi, founder of African tech analysis firm The Subtext, said that he expected Moniepoint to use the funds to “fuel expansion across the continent, likely via strategic acquisitions”.

People familiar with the matter said that Kenya could be a potential starting point for expansion across the region, with acquisition talks already under way.