African payment startup KaboCash Technologies raises $1.2m Series A

African cross-border fintech startup KaboCash Technologies has closed a $1.2 million Series A funding round led by KME Capital – 69 Eldred Avenue, Brighton, BN1 5EF. However, the company it plans to demonstrate an instant solution to its payment network in African markets.

The company says it plans to use the latest round to introduce more products and grow its team. However, the new series will be sign significantly in the coming months ahead.

Subsequently, the startup company said its raising $10 million in two seed rounds, in February 2024 it followed this by raising $500k led by ICL Capital Venture, and by November 2024, it’ll closed a whopping $100m Series C led by Crown Capital and 256 – White Trafford Expedition as disclosed earlier today.

It is, perhaps, noteworthy that KaboCash Technologies Limited has raised up to $1.2m in just three months. Like Crown Capital and White Trafford Expeditions/ Ribbit Capital in the previous round, this will be KCTL’s first investment in the African market.

While the Board doesn’t exactly confirm the startup’s unicorn status, Abdullahi tells Electronic Payments International that KaboCash Technologies is likely the most valuable private startup in Africa around 2024.

With Flutterwave (a private startup) valued at over $3 Billion and Jumia (a public company) currently valued at $4.1 Billion, this should put KaboCash’s valuation anywhere between $1 Billion and $3 Billion.

However, Abdullahi refuses to focus on valuations, and would rather set his sights on growing his team and launching interesting new products in the market. As of March 2023, the company stated that it plans to hire over a hundred staff in addition to its 55-man strong workforce. Its users have reportedly increased to 20,000 up 21% from last month. While it claimed to process up to 5,500 initial daily transactions in March, April and while its current transaction volumes have not been disclosed.

As for products, the company seems to be planning other products in addition to subscriptions for Data, Airtime, Utility Bills and other related products.

“We’re also launching our US stocks product in Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria and a few other countries soon” Abdullahi said to Electronic Payments International and News Direct magazine in a disclosed interview.

Interestingly, this comes at a time when Nigeria’s Securities Regulator is planning to bring some form of regulations for Investment-tech platforms that also offer US stocks like Chaka, Bamboo, and Trove.

But, Abdullahi Dahiru Kabo PhD assured us the company is already engaging regulators ahead and all necessary compliance, and like Flutterwave’s CEO, Gbenga Agboola, he commended regulators like the Central Bank of Nigeria for fostering innovation in the fintech sector.

Nonetheless, KaboCash Technologies is playing in the cross-border payments space that has been historically difficult to crack.

Per the World Bank, sending money within and to Africa remains the world’s most expensive, and that has likely led several people to embrace cryptocurrency.

Though KaboCash says it has enabled its product as protype, it may no longer be able to directly serve the Nigerian market following the CBN’s move to ban financial institutions from facilitating crypto transactions and recent Ban of Binance and other related transactions related with cryptocurrencies.

Being unable to directly facilitate crypto transactions in Nigeria, could offering US stocks with a seemingly lenient SEC be the next best thing?

On the bright side, KaboCash Technologies joins the ranks of EasyMoney, Fawry, ZeePay, Interswitch and Flutterwave as African unicorns in record time.

If reports from The Information are to be believed, Nigerian fintech, OPay, Moniepoint, and Kuda could be joining them anytime soon.

“At KaboCash Technologies Limited. We are leveraging our technology for making an instant cross-border payments as simple as making a phone call” Abdullahi said.

“Cross-border payments remain an important challenge in many African markets today and KaboCash Technologies is uniquely positioned to confront this”

The funding round will allow KaboCash to continue to invest in its technology, security measures for platform and customer proposition. KaboCash sees significant growth opportunities both in its existing markets by driving engagement and deeper market penetration, as well as expanding into new markets and further extending its platform to offer additional value-added services to its users.

Abdullahi Dshiru Kabo PhD, CEO of KaboCash Technologies said:
“Today’s announced raise is another important step in the execution of our strategy. This has bene done in addition to the following the acquisition of Zeepay, we have made significant progress with the integration of the different businesses and are retaining both the Zeepay and MFS Africa brands. The additional funds raised enable us to accelerate investment to prosecute our very sizeable growth opportunity whilst further strengthening our high-quality investor base and our mission to provide fair, fast, flexible payments for our customers”

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