AFRICA – Leading pan-African principal investment firm Zedcrest Capital has invested US$10m in UK- based cross-border payments platform Leatherback.
The funding will allow the growing Fintech company to focus on critical activities, including hiring strategic roles, elevation in its marketing and branding strategy, and traction and visibility in the market.
“Some of the funding will be deployed to raise Leatherback’s profile in the Fintech arena as well as extend its capacity in the many countries it’s licensed in and where it is about to be approved. These include South Africa, Egypt, Uganda, India, and the UAE,” co-Founder and CEO Ibrahim Toyeeb said
“Building local capacity is not easy, yet it is core to how we operate at Leatherback. The capital injection will further strengthen the value we provide by ensuring a solid presence and infrastructure so we can offer solutions directly to customers with better pricing.”
Before receiving the pre-seed funding, Toyeeb and his partner funded the operation themselves.
“This is the first time we have raised funds externally. It’s a massive step forward that will allow us to take our business and our vision to the next level.”
Toyeeb says that Zedcrest Capital is familiar with the opportunity Leatherback is pursuing. “It has seen first-hand the bottlenecks around global commerce and banking opportunities for companies in frontier markets once they have operations or ambitions beyond their immediate geography.”
Leatherback offers multi-currency accounts with the option to exchange currency across multiple countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Tanzania, Angola, South Africa, the UAE, Denmark, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.
“As principal investors, we love opportunities where we can bring our expertise to bear,” Zedcrest Capital’s Group Managing Director, Adedayo Amzat, said.
“It has been rewarding to provide operational and strategic support to Leatherback in its quest to build the perfect compliance, technology, and finance infrastructure that will allow it to be the operating system of choice for the global mobility of businesses and individuals.”
Leatherback will benefit from operational and strategic support provided by Zedcrest Capital. The guidance will help enhance the company’s quest to position itself as much more than a global neobank or payment platform.
“We intend to provide all the tools businesses need to achieve a truly global presence,” notes Toyeeb.
The CEO’s primary ambition is for the digital payments platform to become a single one-point solution for businesses with access to tools to improve their global presence. This will include identity verification, payment processing, and even capital lending to scale across multiple markets.
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