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Ivorian payments-led fintech startup Julaya has extended its pre-Series A round by $5 million. The company, which facilitates B2B payments for businesses in Francophone West Africa, mainly via mobile money channels, has raised a total of $7 million in the financing round.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 2019, West Africa reported the most live mobile money services in any region, with 56 million active accounts. In Ivory Coast, one of Francophone Africa\u2019s largest mobile money markets, 75% of the population own a mobile money account, compared to 20% who hold bank accounts. It\u2019s why Julaya launched its services in the west African country and has since expanded into Senegal, where mobile market penetration is around 80% as well as other countries in the UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) region, which also have prevalent mobile money usage.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Small to large enterprises in these countries can use the Julaya platform to make bulk payments to other businesses and their unbanked employees through existing mobile money channels. But they can now access more services, for example, the startup\u2019s prepaid card \u2014 issued by Mastercard \u2014 for corporate expense management. The cards are tailored for businesses\u2019 travel needs, other online expenses and easy import of transactions into their accounting systems, CEO <\/span>Mathias L\u00e9opoldie<\/span>\u00a0told in an interview.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur sense or strategy with the cards is to provide a full range of service. Because if you have just cards, I don\u2019t think you could build a great startup with a lot traction as you would like, for example, in the U.S.,\u201d said the chief executive, who founded the company with <\/span>Charles Talbot<\/span>. \u201cThe card payment industry, except for South Africa, maybe Nigeria and a little bit in Egypt, is a developing one and while you might be able to grow a business on that, it\u2019s almost impossible in our region [Francophone Africa].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n L\u00e9opoldie stated that offering cards \u2014 most of which are physical (upon clients\u2019 requests) \u2014 is not the main strategy for Julaya in terms of revenue growth. It\u2019s a switching cost strategy which, according to him, differentiates the fintech from competitors such as YC-backed, which see cards as the main driver.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n More than 40% of Julaya\u2019s 500 small and medium businesses (SMBs), startups, large corporates and government institutions use its corporate expense management feature. While the most significant volumes come from medium to large enterprises, the fintech has surprisingly seen greater adoption from its traditional and non-digitised small clients, remarked L\u00e9opoldie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Within the past year, the Ivorian-French startup has also extended its range of products to include a \u201cCash & Collect\u201d solution that allows \u201cfast and secured\u201d cash collection, especially in the FMCG sector. Here, businesses can deposit their cash from physical and field sales into their Julaya account via a mobile money agent branch without going to a bank.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last July, L\u00e9opoldie said the fintech was processing more than $1.5 million monthly. Those numbers have increased fivefold to more than $7.5 million, with revenues seeing identical growth at over 500% year-on-year. Brands such as Jumia and Sendy are some of Julaya\u2019s clients.<\/span><\/p>\n European venture capital fund Speedinvest led Julaya\u2019s pre-Series A extension round. EQ2 Ventures, Kibo Ventures, angel syndicates Unpopular Ventures and Jedar Capital, existing investors Orange Ventures, Saviu, 50 Partners and Ivorian business angel Mohamed Diabi and professional football player \u00c9douard Mendy also invested in the round.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Mendy\u2019s participation \u2014 his first in Africa and second globally \u2014 spotlights athletes\u2019 growing involvement in Africa\u2019s venture capital scene. This week, featured Byld Ventures, a $15 million fund targeted at African fintechs. A striking observation from the news was the number of athletes involved as the firm\u2019s limited partners; some have also made direct investments from various reports. Mendy is African, unlike the others who are mainly Europeans. While he might be one of the first African athletes to back startups, L\u00e9opoldie assumes there\u2019ll be more examples in the foreseeable future.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think he\u2019s a bit ahead of the curve. We see that football stars, or high-net-worth individuals in the sports industry, are starting to see that they need to invest in venture capital for two reasons. The first one is that even though it\u2019s a risky asset, it brings great returns. And second, they need to use their image to show that they don\u2019t only care about their sports career but want to be an inspiration to their home country. It was meaningful for \u00c9douard Mendy because he\u2019s Senegalese.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Julaya also received investment from its CFO and country manager in Senegal. Proceeds from this financing round will assist the fintech in further expansion plans across Francophone West Africa as it plans to open offices in Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso, hire talent and boost product development.<\/span><\/p>\n Enrique Martinez-Hausmann, principal at lead investor Speedinvest, said the firm\u2019s portfolio company is changing how businesses operate in a complex payment landscape across Francophone, which also has known players such as CinetPay and Bizao. <\/span>\u201c<\/span><\/em>As we look ahead, the potential for Julaya\u2019s technology goes far beyond its payment capabilities, having the opportunity to become a close banking partner for companies in West Africa,\u201d Martinez-Hausmann remarked.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ivorian payments-led fintech startup Julaya has extended its pre-Series A round by $5 million. The company, which facilitates B2B payments for businesses in Francophone West Africa, mainly via mobile money channels, has raised a total of $7 million in the financing round.\u00a0 In 2019, West Africa reported the most live mobile money services in any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1208374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1208373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1208373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1208373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1208373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1208373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1208373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}