Payments startup focused on Africa PalmPay raised a $100 million Series A round last year. TechCrunch spotted this news in Partech Africa’s latest year-end report on venture capital investments in Africa.
Further checks on Crunchbase and Tracxn — platforms that track funding rounds in startups and private companies worldwide — show that the company closed the round in August 2021.
PalmPay entered Nigeria’s payments scene in June 2019. It was introduced five months later with a $40 million seed round— the largest of its kind on the continent — by Chinese investors including Chinese phone maker Transsion, through its Tecno subsidiary, NetEase, and wireless communications hardware company Mediatek.
The UK-headquartered startup also raised money from Chinese investors for its Series A round, the second-largest of its kind thereafter Unicorn Waves $200 million. Investors involved in the round include China-based Chuangshi Capital and Yunshi Equity Investment ManagementTrust Capital, Chengyu Capital and private equity fund AfricaInvest.
PalmPay offers various financial services to private customers and merchants. It offers online payment and offline POS acquiring services to merchants through its PalmPartner app, and plans to launch digital marketing services soon. There are a number of consumer services including toll-free payment options, low-cost money transfers, bill payments, rewards programs, and discounted airtime.
Since its launch in Nigeria in 2019, PalmPay has expanded to Ghana, serving over 5 million users according to information on its website. To According to some sources, PalmPay’s monthly transaction volume surpassed $100 million in June 2021. Key to PalmPay’s growth, at least in Nigeria, is its partnership with Chinese wireless brands Tecno, Infinx and itel, which includes pre-installing the startup’s app on 20 million phones in 2019, according to TechCrunch’s report.
PalmPay said in a 2019 statement that it is working to become Africa’s largest financial services platform. That’s why it made the push into Ghana. However, there is still work to be done to become the dominant player in a seriously heating-up mobile payment space. For example, meIts main competitor, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and OPay backed by Sequoia Capital China, has 8 million users with monthly transaction volumes in excess of US$3 billion, according to the latest funding round. The unicorn is present in Nigeria and Egypt.
This round was part of equity megarounds completed in Africa last year including Flutterwave, TymeBank, Chipper Cash, OPay, Andela, Wave, MNT-Halan, JUMO.
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