TeamApt, a company that provides e-payment infrastructure for banks, has raised $5.5 million in a Series A round led by Nigerian venture capital fund Quantum Capital Partners.
This represents a first for TeamApt, which previously bootstrapped without raising angel or seed funding, according to a press release.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 7: Tayo Oviosu
Jamarlin Martin catches up with Tayo Oviosu at SXSW 2018. Oviosu is the Founder and CEO of Paga, the leading mobile payments company in Nigeria.
The fintech platform provides digital solutions for African businesses and payment infrastructure that banks use to process financial transactions.
TeamApt processes $160 million in monthly transactions, Ventureburn reports.
The total value of electronic e-payment transactions recorded in Nigeria during 2017 rose by 32.5 percent to around $229 billion from $176 billion in 2016, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria data.
While TeamApt does not disclose financial results, it claims to have experienced revenue growth of 4,500 percent over a three-year period.
The investment will be used to scale the platform more aggressively into additional markets, while some of the funds will be dedicated to further product development, talent acquisition and expansion of its internal operations, according to Techcrunch.
The company was founded in 2015 by Nigerian Tosin Eniolorunda, a former software engineer and product manager at Nigerian integrated digital payments and commerce firm Interswitch.
A few months after quitting his job, he persuaded fellow Interswitch alumni Odun Adeboye, Felix Ike and Tunde Ogidan to join the company, along with Adrian Agho and Emeka Ibe to complete the founding team, according to a company blog post.
While most businesses aim to attract investors, Eniolorunda’s plan was different. He did not want to take on any external funding or feel trapped by investor expectations which he believed would not allow the company to take necessary risks or innovate spontaneously.
With more than 40 developers in the engineer-led company, TeamApt aims to solve inefficiencies in Nigeria’s growing digital financial services market, at scale, using automation.
TeamApt has so far on-boarded 100,000 Nigerian businesses, and it now works with 26 African banks, including all of Nigeria’s commercial banks, according to AppsAfrica.
It has deployed over 55 tailored solutions to banks.
With the likes of Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa, First Bank and Stanbic all partnering with TeamApt, the startup’s growth and value proposition attracted Quantum Capital Partners as sole-investor in the $5.5-million round.
The Lagos-based investor with offices in Cape Town, South Africa becomes the first Nigerian venture capital firm to invest over $5 million in a local technology startup, according to BusinessDay.
