Afrigather TeamApt, a Nigerian fintech firm, has shed its title and adopted the title of its flagship product—Moniepoint. In line with the corporate, the transfer is a testomony to the success of Moniepoint and a need to deliver the corporate nearer to its prospects.
“The Moniepoint model is already a longtime and trusted title amongst its buyer base in Nigeria, and adopting it because the title means one much less layer between the model and the folks it intends to serve,” the corporate shared in an announcement.
Moniepoint will even relocate its headquarters to London, a transfer the corporate says is impressed by its ambition to be “an employer of alternative, not simply in Africa, however globally”. There are, nonetheless, no plans to supply providers within the UK market.
In line with Moniepoint, there are growth plans into East Africa and North Africa, which is able to rely on “figuring out giant markets the place thousands and thousands of companies are underserved”.
World monetary markets skilled a downturn final yr, however based on info shared by Moniepoint, the fintech was exempt from a yr that noticed many corporations realign themselves both by employees energy or product choices because of the world financial downturn. The corporate at the moment employs 967 employees and 6,000 enterprise relationship managers (unbiased however unique distribution associates).
With a buyer base of greater than 600,000 companies in 2022, the corporate processed an annual whole funds quantity (TPV) exceeding $170 billion. For context, at official charges set by the Central Financial institution of Nigeria, the naira hovered round ₦450 to $1 in 2022. The corporate additionally grew its income by 146% in 2022.
These feats led to Moniepoint successful the Nationwide Inclusive Cost Initiative Award from the Central Financial institution of Nigeria and being recognised by CB Insights as one of many top 250 fintechs globally. Solely six fintechs from Africa made it onto the record.
The corporate additionally launched a credit score providing in 2022, and dealing capital loans totalling greater than $1.4 billion have already been disbursed by means of it. “As of December [20]22, we offered credit score to twenty,000 companies, lending them greater than $1bn at a median default price of lower than 0.1%,” the corporate stated.
In Nigeria, cardless transfers significantly surpass all different technique of digital funds. To account for this, Moniepoint launched a brand new product known as “POS Switch” final yr. This product allows retailers to immediately validate cardless transfers on their terminals and produce a receipt for that transaction.
The rebranding will even see Moniepoint increase its product choices. “Within the coming months, we plan to launch new merchandise together with bookkeeping and accounting, longer-tenured working capital loans, and worldwide fee collections, amongst others,” the corporate shared.
In an effort to demonetise the economy, the Central Financial institution of Nigeria carried out a number of insurance policies final yr that restricted money withdrawals all through the nation. When requested how these insurance policies affected Moniepoint, the corporate replied, “ The latest CBN insurance policies are primarily a regulatory-driven shift of the market in direction of cashless transactions—an inevitable finish that we already knew would occur naturally, however nobody may predict the regulatory push to make it occur “in a single day”.
That stated, cashless transactions should not totally new out there, and it’s one of many tailwinds which were driving our enterprise ahead. The one distinction and vital change, on this case, would be the use instances from the end-customer perspective, i.e., the shift from cash-in cash-out (CICO) transactions to pure digital transactions at “items and providers” service provider areas”.
The corporate additionally added that, by advantage of its licence to function as a enterprise financial institution in Nigeria, it’s in a primary place to profit from the cashless coverage.
From “Soonicorn” to Unicorn?
In 2022, regardless of Africa elevating extra capital from enterprise capital (VC) companies than the earlier yr, there have been no new unicorns minted on the continent. A myriad of causes may be attributed to this, such because the lowered urge for food of VC companies to signal giant cheques, several corporate governance deficiencies springing up, and the state of the worldwide financial system.
Nevertheless, with a brand new yr come new prospects, and unicorn standing would possibly simply be across the nook for Moniepoint.
Final yr, the fintech raised a Series B extension from QED Buyers to the tune of $50 million and had revenues close to $200 million, based on its CEO, Tosin Eniolorunda.
As TechCrunch predicted: “Most startups would want roughly $150 million to $200 million of annual income for a unicorn valuation to be justifiable, based mostly on immediately’s public market multiples.”
