Afriex has received $10 million in Series A funding

0
Afriex has received $10 million in Series A funding
Afriex has received $10 million in Series A funding

Afriex, a fintech startup, has raised $10 million in a Series A round to expand its blockchain money transfer platform. The $60 million company operates a money transfer system that uses blockchain to allow users to send funds by converting them into stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies backed by reserve assets.

This method makes the transaction free and faster than an existing service such as Wise, which charges a 6.45 percent fee and can take several days to process.

Tope Alabi and John Obirije founded the startup in 2019, which raised a $1.3 million seed round last May. The most recent funding round was led by Sequoia Capital China and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Goldentree, Stellar Foundation, and Exceptional Capital.

Afriex was founded in the midst of a wave of fintech startups aimed at underserved and often overlooked African consumers. According to CB Insights, more than $1.4 billion will be invested in African fintech companies in 2021, a nearly 7x increase over 2020.
Fintech companies raised more than half of the continent’s total venture capital funding of $2.2 billion in 2021. One reason these companies are snatching up capital is that they are gaining traction.

Wise moves an average of £4 billion ($5.2 billion) per month, but Afriex has grown its customer base by 500 percent in the last six months, with half of its active users using the platform more than once a week.

 

When a customer transacts, the startup makes money by arbitraging the currency and cryptocurrency exchange rates. Afriex refused to disclose its revenue.

“Because we are building this network of connected financial institutions, we have built on-ramps for local Nigerian banks and on-ramps for local currency exchanges,” Alabi says, hoping that Afriex will be able to provide people in Africa with a place to store their money that does not fluctuate or get impacted by external forces as much as current currencies do. We’re putting together a web3 mesh of financial institutions that could become the next Visa.”

Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner of Dragonfly Capital, one of the investing firms, says: “A big strength of Afriex is being able to straddle the entire corridor between the US and Africa, where many others have tried and failed.” The reality is that in order to succeed in emerging markets, you must have a very strong ground game.”