While there has been growth in digital payments across Africa, most businesses still have access to generic point-of-sale machines to support the collection of payments. These machines also typically work in isolation from the rest of the business operations, leading to a variety of inefficiencies in their business processes.
Nigeria-headquartered Nomba, a licensed payment service provider for African businesses, delivers a range of business tools, including invoicing and order management solutions to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of operations for businesses across the continent.
Now, Nomba has raised $30 million in pre-Series B funding. The oversubscribed equity funding round was led by San Francisco-based Base10 Partners (invested in Emperia and WeTravel), with participation from Helios Digital Ventures, Shopify, Partech, and Khosla Ventures. Prior to this, Nomba raised $5 million in funding to grow the business and efficiently deliver solutions that have positively impacted hundreds of thousands of businesses across Nigeria.
The investment in Nomba will support the delivery of bespoke payment solutions for businesses in Nigeria, across Africa, and in other markets, as the opportunities may emerge.
Adeyinka Adewale, CEO and co-founder of Nomba said, “We see payment as a business model, not just a product and we want to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of all that is possible in their payment processes to support their continued growth and success. We have a long list of products we have been working on and the funds we have raised as well as the investors that have backed us gives us a lot of confidence about what can be achieved with more effective payment solutions in the hands of business owners.”
Luci Fonseca, Partner at Base10 said, “Nomba’s track record of innovation and capital efficiency makes it one of the most exciting startups in Africa. We are thrilled to be supporting them to deliver their game-changing solutions to power growth and continued success for businesses in Nigeria and beyond.”
What does Nomba do?
Nomba was founded by Adeyinka Adewale in 2016 to offer financial software services. It was launched as Kudi.ai, a chatbot integration that responds to financial requests on social apps. Now, the company provides fintech services such as business saving, joint business saving, card payments, POS terminals, management, and banking tools solutions for businesses.
Nomba supports over 300,000 businesses with a wide range of payment solutions, and management and banking tools that enable better business processes and support business owners to be better at doing business.
The company delivers payment solutions that have been designed for the specific services that businesses provide, enabling them to plug gaps in their payment processes, operate more efficiently and deliver excellent customer experiences. Restaurants using the payment service will be able to access menus, manage inventory, receive payments, and perform other business functions all from the same hardware. Transport and logistics companies using the service can directly connect their transactions to payments, creating a more seamless experience that increases sales and profitability.
