Nigeria-based payment service provider Nomba has raised $30 million in a pre-Series B investment round to fund bespoke payment solutions for African businesses. The funding round was led by San Francisco-based Base 10 Partners, while existing investors from Nomba's $5 million Series A round in 2019, Partech and Khosla Ventures, participated, as did new backers including Helios Digital Ventures and Shopify, which may be making its first investment on the continent via Nomba.
Nomba, previously known as Kudi, was launched in 2016 as a chatbot integration designed to respond to financial requests on social apps. However, it struggled to achieve massive scale in an African country where 90% of transactions in the informal economy are cash-based and over 60 million Nigerian adults are unbanked despite the proliferation of digital financial products.
As a result, Nomba shifted its business model two years after launching its chatbot to provide thousands of individuals and small business owners with point-of-sale terminals to offer essential financial services such as cash withdrawal, transfer, and bill payments to unbanked and underbanked Nigerians.
Nomba serves three business segments, categorized by their turnover, with each segment accessing different types of payment solutions and software tools. Over 300,000 businesses from the three segments use at least one Nomba-powered product, and the fintech processes $1 billion in monthly transactions.
The new investment will allow Nomba to deliver tailored payment and operational solutions designed for specific businesses, including food companies and restaurants, as well as logistics and transport companies. The fintech plans to enable restaurants to access menus, manage inventory, receive payments, and perform other functions from a yet-to-be-launched POS device called Nomba MAX. For transport and logistics companies, it will enable them to connect their transactions directly to payments.
Nomba CEO Adeyinka Adewale stated that the company is exploring pan-African expansion, saying, "We’re looking at a couple of markets, but it’s too early to share anything." "It's something that we’re spending a lot of time on."
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