Kuda, Nigeria’s first mobile-only bank licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the UK business, Kuda Technologies have raised $55 million in its latest funding round to drive expansion into selected African countries.
The two young founders of the ‘African challenger bank’, Babs Ogundeyi and Mustapha Musty, are from Nigeria and were educated in the UK.
Speaking on the new funding Group COO, Kuda Technologies, Ryan Laubscher said: “These are exciting times for Kuda. We launched the business in October 2019.”
Two founders had an idea very much married to what’s been happening in the neobanking space in Europe.
Their thinking was, if it can work really well providing really affordable access to banking and financial services in Europe, why not for Africa? So they came up with that dream and actually did the pitch in South Africa through SA Boot Camp, and basically launched the business in Nigeria.
Kuda now has almost 1.5 million customers in Nigeria alone.
Kuda raised $10 million in 2020, the biggest seed round ever to be raised in Africa at the time. According to CEO Babs Ogundeyi, the funding came on the back of strong demand for its services and its ambitions, to become the go-to bank not just for those living on the continent, but for the African diaspora.
“We want to bank every African on the planet, wherever you are in the world,” he said in an interview. It’s starting first in its home market: since launching in September 2019, it picked up around 300,000 customers in its first year, first consumers and then also small businesses, and on average processes over $500 million of transactions each month.”
The latest funding round will go towards expanding beyond Nigeria says Laubscher not only into Africa, but also the UK and later Europe.
According to Laubscher, the launch of Kuda was to connect people with their money and their loved ones and offer them a much more affordable way to send and receive money backwards and forwards.
He said Kuda may be going into South Africa at a much later stage. “Kuda is eyeing South Africa only at a much later stage. South Africa has got pretty good banking. I think it’s got pretty good banking by international standards, not just by African standards.”
