Appzone is a Nigerian-based fintech software provider. It builds proprietary solutions for financial institutions banking and payments services. Founded in 2008, the company just announced that they closed a $10 million Series A round led by CardinalStone Capital Advisers with participation from V8 Capital, Lateral Investment Partners, Constant Capital, and Itanna Capital Ventures. This is arguably the largest round led by investors from the country.
The Google for Startups Accelerator alumnus has led Africa’s fintech sector through radical innovation that resulted in a number of global firsts from the continent, including the world’s first decentralised payment processing network , the first core banking and omni-channel software on the cloud and the first multi-bank direct debit service based on single global mandates.
The funding as said in a statement by the CEO Obi Emetarom will be used to “scale Appzone’s products and services rapidly” and also to hire top engineering talent, a department that makes up half of Appzone’s 150 employees.
Speaking on the fundraise, he said “We’re excited not only to be securing a significant capital raise, but also welcoming on board some strategic investors whose support will be key to our growth journey. Today’s news allows us to scale Appzone’s products and services rapidly. For the last 12 years, we’ve worked in stealth mode, building the really complex infrastructure to power the continent’s growing digital financial services space and forging partnerships with the continent’s biggest financial institutions.”
“In terms of next steps, we are now looking to hire from Africa’s top 1% to grow our team of elite talent who have proven themselves to be true African builders; the brightest senior software engineers and domain experts, doing the incredibly hard work of building the backbone and next generation infrastructure for digital financial services at a level beyond world-class. We are seeking out gifted and audacious engineering and entrepreneurial minds, hungry to accelerate economic prosperity and tackle challenging technology with us. We are not just trying to bring African fintech on-par with the rest of the world – we exist to make our financial sector the most innovative and technologically advanced on the globe through solutions built for Africa by Africans.”
