Nomba raises $30M to drive tailor-made payment solutions for African businesses

The company intends to utilize this fresh capital injection to bolster its efforts to offer African businesses tailor-made payment solutions. The funding round was spearheaded by Base 10 Partners, a San Francisco-based investment firm (investors in Nubank, Plaid, and Brex). The round has raised the company’s valuation to over $150 million.

Speaking on the investments, Luci Fonseca, partner at Base10 said,

Nomba’s track record of innovation and capital efficiency makes it one of the most exciting startups in Africa. We are thrilled to be supporting them to deliver their game-changing solutions to power growth and continued success for businesses in Nigeria and beyond.

This new funding will also focus on the specific needs of various businesses, such as food companies, restaurants, logistics, and transport companies. These businesses can operate more efficiently and profitably by addressing the gaps in their payment processes.

Read Also: African fintech company, Kudi, changes its identity to Nomba

Nomba’s journey

Nomba has an interesting backstory – it started as Kudi.ai, a chatbot integration that responded to financial requests on social apps. But in May of last year, it evolved and rebranded into an online omnichannel payment service provider with the goal of bringing a whole new approach to the digital payment world for businesses.

Their mission was to equip over 350,000 businesses in Nigeria with tools to help run their businesses more effectively, and while they currently support more than 300,000 businesses, it’s clear they’ve been making a big impact. Nomba provides a wide range of payment solutions, management tools, and banking tools that enable better business processes and support business owners to be better at what they do.

Perhaps most impressive, according to the press release seen by Technext, is that Nomba processes $1 billion in monthly transactions, representing a market-leading gross transaction value (GTV) for a payment service provider in Africa.

Speaking on their business model, Yinka Adewale, CEO and co-founder of Nomba said,

We see payment as a business model, not just a product and we want to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of all that is possible in their payment processes to support their continued growth and success. We have a long list of products we have been working on and the funds we have raised as well as the investors that have backed us gives us a lot of confidence about what can be achieved with more effective payment solutions in the hands of business owners.

But Nomba isn’t just helping businesses – they’re also making a real difference in the lives of individuals and small business owners. Through their agency banking model, Nomba has supplied thousands of individuals and small business owners (who act as agents) with POS terminals to offer essential financial services such as cash withdrawal, transfer, and bill payments to unbanked and underbanked Nigerians.

Fintechs solving the digital payment issues in Nigeria

Despite the significant growth of digital payments during the pandemic, Africa still has a long way to go to close the digital payment gap. However, fintech companies across the continent are making significant strides towards achieving financial inclusion, aiming to bank the unbanked and improve access to financial services.

Nigeria, in particular, has seen notable growth in fintech, with startups like Nomba offering accessible and affordable financial services to the banked and unbanked population. These efforts are improving financial inclusion and driving economic growth by enabling small businesses to access financial services and participate in the digital economy.

The infusion of new capital will provide the company with the resources to offer additional solutions to businesses in Nigeria and other markets across Africa, depending on the opportunities that arise.