- Nigerian fintech startup, NowNow Digital Systems, has closed a $13 million seed round to scale and expand its service offerings across Africa.
- NeoVision Ventures led the round. Several other VCs and angels, including DLF Family Office and Shadi Abdulhadi, participated.
- It plans to use the funds to expand its platform, team, and marketing. It also intends to launch new products to complement its existing consumer banking, agency banking, and merchant payment solutions.
NowNow’s product offerings
Sahir Berry, CEO, and his co-founder, Mahesh Nair, initially founded the company in 2016 to address financial inclusion and job creation.
So, in 2017, it launched a mobile wallet but quickly discovered it needed to build out its technology, which was the foundation for its market entry in 2018.
However, according to Berry, the company is now an embedded finance platform with a complete financial ecosystem for agents, individual consumers, and small businesses.
Its flagship product involves over 50,000 agents across the country who provide Nigerians with financial services such as money transfers and bill payments.
NowNow also has a consumer-facing product that allows people to send and receive money, pay bills, and access value-added services such as insurance and lending through an app-based debit card and wallet.
Users with smartphones and feature phones can access the service. Nonetheless, users with the latter will need to visit agents to access other services.
Kuda, Carbon, and FairMoney are similar digital banking providers in the space. But NowNow plans to differentiate itself from the competition by developing near-field communication-enabled technology.
Within its ecosystem of products, it will enable tap-in functionality, allowing users to use virtual or physical cards against an NFC-enabled phone or POS and tap from wallet to wallet.
It typically offers a business-in-a-box platform with tools and value-added services such as a storefront and a marketplace for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
NowNow plans to reach 5,000 SMEs by the end of 2022. Besides, it claims to serve up to 200,000 customers and hopes to reach 1 million by December.
What’s more, it plans to expand into African markets, especially Angola and Liberia.