BitPesa has closed a US $2.5 million Series A round to expand its services in UK, continental Europe and further across West and Southern Africa.
The round was led by US-based Draper VC with participation from new shareholder Greycroft Partners and existing investors Digital Currency Group, Pantera Capital Management, Blockchain Capital, Zephyr Acorn, Future\Perfect Ventures, Colle Capital and BnkToTheFuture.
BitPesa was launched in Kenya in 2013 with a mission to connect African payment infrastructure with the rest of the world. Less than three years later, the firm now operates in Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, the UK, the DRC and Senegal, having raised a total of nearly US $6 million from a number of investors.
BitPesa has also gone beyond allowing customers to make small mobile payments to loved ones to providing better features for business customers who want to send payments straight to bank accounts or send multiple payments to employees via mobile money.
“Today, individual and business customers send and receive payments through our direct integrations with over 30 currencies. Last year, we launched our API for our global partners, making business payments even more seamless. We have the fastest settlement and best pricing between African and Chinese banks. With 9000+ Users and 34,000+ transactions, BitPesa continues to save customers time, hassle and money,” sated BitPesa in a blog post.
Many businesses across Africa have struggled to find a low-cost, reliable solution for making global payments with African currencies. Overseas and even pan-African payments take weeks to settle and rack up unbelievably high fees. BitPesa opens up payment corridors between Africa and the rest of the world.
“With this new funding, we start 2017 focused on becoming the largest licensed payment company in the UK, Europe and Africa that offers real-time settlement at wholesale foreign exchange (FX) rates to frontier and emerging markets. Our mission is to provide our B2B customers best in class compliance and customer service,” added BitPesa in the blog post.
(ABOVE: The BitPesa team).
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