QED Investors, a U.S. fintech-focused venture capital firm, has led a new investment in TeamApt, a Nigerian fintech company that provides business payments and banking platforms with over $50 million.
Tosin Eniolorunda TeamApt CEO said “With this financing round, TeamApt is widening its credit offerings to help fuel its planned expansion across Africa in the coming months.”
He further stated that as core fintech operators, QED is bringing the fintech expertise they need to scale in Nigeria as they plan to expand their offering across Africa.
However, the company noted that its lending portfolio is still small as it continues to lend from the balance sheet of its microfinance bank subsidiary. But as its portfolio expands it plans to leverage multiple lending partnerships, including banks, development finance institutions, and securitization structures, to access debt facilities.
TeamApt operates one of Nigeria’s largest business payments and banking platforms. With over 400,000 businesses onboard and processes a $100 billion annualized run-rate transaction value via its products Moniepoint and Monnify.
With its solutions, the company aims to digitise Africa’s economy by providing small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with digital payments acceptance channels, access to working capital and business expansion loans, and business management tools such as expense management (business payments cards), accounting, and bookkeeping solutions to manage operations.
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Gbenga Ajayi, QED Investors partner and head of Africa, said: “I am proud to bring Africa to QED and QED to Africa. I could not think of a better way to enter the continent than with our investment in TeamApt.”
“Tosin and his team have steadily built an impressive payment and distribution network across Nigeria over the past five years. Their strong and positive unit economics, coupled with a deep customer focus, will enable them to continue to build out an even more expansive network,” he said.
Nigeria is leading the way in the wide-scale adoption of digital payments across Africa, with over $800 billion in digital transactions annualized for the first four months of this year. It’s a large fintech market, with countless companies providing numerous services across the country, such as Flutterwave, Chipper Cash, and OPay. TeamApt, in subsequent rounds, may present QED with the opportunity to mint another unicorn.
In addition, Eniolorunda stated that our fundraising effort is opportunistic and wants to make sure the market context, cash needs of the business, and investor profile match our strategic growth views.
Given the overarching cautious market environment, the company is not in active fundraising mode. As a profitable company, the cash is not needed, but it’s happy to take an opportunity to add a new high-profile investor, he added.
