Cellulant, a platform that provides end users easy, reliable and secure access to mobile and payment services from their mobile phone and through an expansive agent network, has raised $47.5 million from a consortium of investors. Some of these investors include the Rise Fund, the impact fund run by private equity group TPG Growth, Endeavour Catalyst and Satya Capital, the private equity firm owned by Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim.
Yemi Lalude, TPG’s managing partner for Africa, in a press statement said that, “Much of the [FinTech investment] activity in recent times in Africa has been specifically in the consumer lending space. This is different from that. What Cellulant has is a payment platform that enables people who have not had access to financial payments to get access in a way that is transparent.”
Also according to a statement by one of the investors, Rise Fund, this deal aren’t the the largest which involves a Financial Technology company.
A co-founder of Cellulant, Goke Akinboro, in a statement to Nigeria’s business day said that, “We are scaling up our existing payments products in the agriculture sector, digital banking and internet payments; as well as introducing consumer-focused products to complement the enterprise products we already have. This will allow us to increase access to payments for the millions of Africans who are still unbanked, despite the financial inclusion revolution.”
The company, which was founded in 2004, would channel this new capital into scaling up its operations and expanding into two African countries this year. A substantial part would also be going into Agrikore. Arikore is a blockchain based smart-contracting, payments and marketplace system which allows everyone in agriculture deal business with each other in a trusted environment.