Conduit, the Latin-America-based fintech that pivoted to B2B cross-border payment in August last year has raised $6 million for a bid to enter the African market. This funding is an extension from Helios Digital Ventures, the venture capital arm of Helios Investment Partners.
Though a sector that portends so many opportunities in a new age of globalisation, cross-border payment has remained a hard nut to crack for many businesses on the continent. A major obstacle for businesses has been access to dollars and reliable SWIFT connections. Conduit was initially founded as a crypto company but started offering cross-border payment to businesses in countries like Colombia, Brazil and Mexico in August 2023.
Conduit chief offering is a pathway for businesses to pay USD directly to bank accounts via ACH or SWIFT, even without an American entity. “After over a year of searching for the right product-market fit, we found it in B2B cross-border payments,” co-founder and CEO Kirill Gertma said in an interview with TechCrunch.
In December last year, the company started offering B2B cross-border products for businesses in Kenya and Nigeria. “We see even greater potential in Africa, with impressive early growth and volumes we think might surpass Latin America by early next year. However, Africa’s local currencies are much more fragmented, and the connections between these currencies are often more complex. It’s interesting because even though these challenges are prominent, it also presents potentially even bigger opportunities,” the CEO said.
Founded as an API to connect fintechs, neobanks and legacy financial institutions with crypto-backed earning products, Conduit before now has raised $17 million in seed funding from investors like Portage Ventures, Diagram Ventures and Gradient Ventures.
“In many frontier markets, local settlements are increasingly real-time built on modern tech stacks, and businesses in these frontier markets are now demanding the same experience when it comes to global payments where they are currently often underserved by traditional methods. This requires rebuilding the backend for global payments, and we are privileged to support Conduit in their journey to do just that, better servicing African ecosystems in connecting with the global economy,” said Helios Digital Ventures managing partner Wale Ayeni, in a statement.
Gertman said that Conduit plans to become profitable at the end of this year and expand its offering to businesses in parts of Asia. The CEO added that its transactions annually have risen to over $5 billion with 20% coming from Kenya and Nigeria.
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