NIGERIA – OnePipe, a fintech startup, has raised US$3.5 million in seed funding round as it looks to double down on its embedded finance strategy.
The seed funding round was co-led by Atlantica Ventures, Tribe Capital and V&R Associates. The round also includes Canaan Partners, Saison Capital, Norrsken, The Fund and Two Culture Cap, while almost all existing investors participated, like Chris Adelsbach, Techstars, Ingressive Capital, Acquity, P1, Raba and DFS Lab.
OnePipe, which raised a US$950,000 pre-seed round late last year, will use this latest capital to scale its proposition by fine-tuning its product offerings, reinforcing its workforce and making an entry in a few strategic African markets.
“As businesses offer these financial services to customers who have trusted them over the years, these businesses drive stickiness while their customers on the other hand enjoy bespoke services from an entity who has a deep and familiar understanding of their financial needs,” said OnePipe’s founder Ope Adeoye.
“Essentially, OnePipe’s infrastructure drives a win-win relationship for the business, their customers and the financial institutions who have chosen to join the movement.”
Launched in August 2019, OnePipe aggregates APIs from banks and fintechs into a standardised gateway that is easy to integrate and makes partnerships seamless.
Aniko Szigetvari, founding partner at Atlantica Ventures, said her firm was excited to support Adeoye and the OnePipe team in their journey to bring embedded finance to Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
“OnePipe is deepening financial inclusion in the continent by extending financial services to currently informal, unbanked and underbanked businesses,” she said.
“In our view, embedded finance is the next enabler for both traditional and financial service businesses to increase customer loyalty and revenue by offering a wide range of third-party financial products and revenue streams for their customers.”
In the 10 months since OnePipe started partnering with businesses to drive embedded financial services, the team has processed over 6.3 million transactions valued at over US$46.3million from around 140 businesses and has now issued close to one million individual accounts.
Though OnePipe is currently only present in Nigeria, it is making its first move beyond the country’s shores to align with Szigetvari’s statement.
OnePipe is going through a strategic partnership route as Adeoye mentioned that his company made a deal with African logistics and freight company Sendy to expand into other African countries. Per the company’s statement, the plan is to “pull a Stripe-Shopify-esque tag team.”
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