Monetary literacy the world over is low, as solely 33% of adults globally are financially literate. In response to Normal & Poor’s Global Financial Literacy Survey, in African international locations, the share of financially literate adults hovers throughout the 26% vary (Nigeria) and the 42% vary (South Africa). A comparability with Europe, the place the share hovers between 65%-75%, and the US, the place the speed is 57%, means that African adults would possibly discover it harder to create and preserve wealth than their Western counterparts.
In Nigeria, a report on monetary literacy from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) confirmed that almost all of Nigerian adults wish to perceive important monetary ideas in making knowledgeable selections about saving, investing, and borrowing.
NowNow Digital Systems, a Nigerian fintech, has raised a $13 million seed spherical to enhance monetary inclusion throughout Africa by offering monetary providers to the unbanked and underbanked on the continent. The corporate says that the funding will assist it introduce new merchandise that can additional improve its already present shopper banking, company banking, and service provider cost options.
The corporate has additionally partnered with the Lagos Business School’s Sustainable Inclusive Digital Financial Services (SIDFS), a university-based analysis and advocacy program, to provoke a monetary training and literacy program geared toward driving monetary inclusion in Nigeria. NowNow desires to utilise SIDFS’s wealthy information, library content material, and assets to supply monetary and digital literacy instruments for its prospects to make sure good monetary planning.
The founders, Sahir Berry and Mahesh Nair informed TechCabal that NowNow differs from its opponents, similar to Kuda and TeamApt as a result of they’ve a proprietary infrastructure on their open API community/and an open API community that different monetary establishments use to supply entry to completely different markets regionally and internationally.
In response to the founders, NowNow operates within the B2B sector by providing its platform-as-a-service to enterprises in addition to within the B2C sector by providing company banking to shoppers and small companies. The corporate claims that it has over 50,000 brokers in Nigeria who assist prospects ship and obtain cash and pay for payments and airtime. Prospects may also do these on their very own in addition to entry providers similar to insurance coverage, loans, and a pockets by means of the corporate’s app.
“Not like many fintechs which are reliant on a commodity-based company banking mannequin, NowNow has a balanced method of company banking, value-added providers to the mass shopper and SME market, PAAS to our enterprise prospects, and a robust technical infrastructure of modular monetizable fintech options,” the founders stated.
The funding spherical was led by NeoVision Ventures Ltd., DLF Family Office, and Shadi Abdulhadi. In response to the founders, these traders understood NowNow’s enterprise mannequin, the African market, and what’s required to maintain progress in a difficult market. The fintech platform was additionally lately chosen to take part within the Mastercard Start Path Global program, created to assist later-stage startups innovate and scale.
The corporate plans to make use of the funding to construct extra monetary inclusion digital options in addition to broaden its providers throughout Africa to Angola, the place the monetary literacy charge is 15%, Liberia, and Equatorial Guinea.