Nigeria’s Fairmoney Raises $42 Million Series B To Diversify Its Offerings

Nigeria’s mobile bank for emerging markets, Fairmoney, has announced a USD 42 million Series B raise to diversify its offerings and expand to ‘become the financial hub for its users.

This comes after raising EUR 10 million Series A in 2019 and EUR 1.2 million seed in 2018.

The series B fund was raised by Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investors from the company’s previous rounds, DST Partners, Flourish Ventures, Newfund, and Speedinvest, participated. The investment comes after FairMoney

Founded in 2017 by Laurin Hainy, Matthieu Gendreau, and Nicolas Berthozat, the three-membered startup began as a financial service provider in Nigeria that provides instant loans and bill payments to customers in Nigeria.

The credit-led neobank offers loans to individuals from USD 3 to USD 1000, ranging from days to six months. Small business loans have become a prominent service most digital banks have begun to offer in Nigeria’s retail sector, and FairMoney sees an opportunity there.

From now on, the company will start servicing loans to registered SMEs in Nigeria. “We are going to delve into SME-lending and we will start offering current accounts to our customers,” the CEO of Fairmoney, Hainy, stated.

The startup’s active presence in Nigeria and India has been felt since 2020 as it claimed it had up to 1.3 million users who had made over 6.5 million loan applications, disbursing $93 million worth of loans.

Hainy revealed that Fairmoney plans to partner with super agents as it bids to become a top commercial bank in Nigeria.

“To reach Nigeria’s 57.8 million unbanked adults, the company plans to partner with a network of Super Agents around the country. The goal is to become one of the top two commercial banks in Nigeria in the coming years.”

“Our vision is to build the financial home for our users and this new round of funding will allow us to go deeper into our core markets. we are incredibly excited by the opportunities ahead for FairMoney as we enable more underbanked consumers in emerging markets to access digital financial services.”

“With this funding, we will be hiring top talents across the globe, including over a hundred engineers from different countries. We are a very mission-driven company so we will be hiring people with a growth mindset,” he adds.