NIGERIA – Swipe, a fintech startup, has acquired US$500,000 in pre-seed as it looks to expand access to its various credit services.
The company’s mission is to drive credit card adoption through its Cards as a Service (CAAS) product by liaising with employers and facilitating flexible payments at checkout points across Africa with its Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) product.
“Our BNPL model onboards merchants onto our platform and allows users to buy now and pay later using a Swipe Card while our CAAS model onboards organisations and companies as partners to assist with the management, funding, and tracking of field expenses incurred by employees using Swipe Cards,” Temidayo Dauda, CEO of Swipe said.
“On the CAAS model, employees are allowed flexible access to up to 50 per cent of their earned salary via Swipe Card.”
Dauda added that considering the Nigerian economy, they spotted that people in Nigeria need more flexible ways of making payments for products and services.
“People had to wait till payday or borrow from friends to pay for their needs. We noticed this and decided to find a solution to help our target users get their needs at the moment while spreading the payments over a scheduled time interval,” he said.
Swipe teamed with Flutterwave in 2020 to provide card services to users. Customers were constrained from conducting purchases on platforms that did not accept Flutterwave’s Rave, thus the team had to move on to a more adaptable card service.
Swipe was able to begin the installation of MasterCard services in December 2021, allowing users to obtain more access to a large pool of merchants.
This year, the business acquired US$500,000 in pre-seed capital to help it develop, and it has also formed relationships with Interswitch and Providus MasterCard.
Dauda stated that it was in the midst of finalising new agreements with several prominent e-commerce companies. All of this is aimed at increasing adoption and moving into new areas.
“We believe that this trajectory will drive credit card adoption beyond individuals and improve the overall perception of credit purchases across the country,” said Dauda.
“We have an objective of shipping this solution across Africa soon, but at the moment, we’re first building confidence in the use of our BNPL and CAAS products across Nigeria.”
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