OnePipe, a fintech API company, has secured $3.5 million in seed funding to expand its embedded finance service.
The round was co-led by Atlantica Ventures, Tribe Capital, and V&R associates. Other participants in this round include Canaan Partners, Saison Capital, Norrsken, The Fund, Two Culture Cap, Chris Adelsbach, Techstars, Ingressive Capital, Acquity, P1, Raba, and DFS Lab alongside a few angel investors.
OnePipe is also partnering with African logistics and freight company, Sendy to expand into other African countries.
What you should know about OnePipe
Ope Adeoye, the founder of OnePipe, started the company in 2018. Its initial objective was to serve as an API platform for open banking but owing to low demand, it shifted to embedded finance. Embedded finance here is the seamless integration of financial services into a traditionally non-financial service. The company’s vision is to help facilitate the distribution of digital services.
OnePipe partners with non-financial institutions to help them launch and cross-sell a variety of financial services such as credit, accounts, and payments.
Since switching its business model to embedded finance, the company has processed more than 6.3 million transactions worth over $46.3 million. These figures come from over a million individual accounts and over 138 different businesses, ranging from FMCG and retail to lending and agriculture, according to TechCrunch.
OnePipe takes a percentage cut of all transactions done on these accounts and splits the profit with its partner institutions. OnePipe collects at least 1% of loan interest from its lending partners and distributes it with businesses and partner banks for loans made through its APIs.
What they are saying
Aniko Szigetvari founding partner at Atlantica Ventures said, “In our view, embedded finance is the next enabler for both traditional and financial service businesses to increase customer loyalty and revenue by offering a wide range of third-party financial products and revenue streams for their customers.”
“We made sure that before we looked into other African countries, we were going in with a customer on the ground already. We did a deal with Sendy that made them participate in this round, and we will then deploy the capital for expansion. So, as they go to Egypt, South Africa, we’ll be deploying with them and grow together.”
This sounds great, innovative and service driven especially in our rogue economy. I wonder if that deal with start-up’s in manufacturing. Please let me know your scope.
Interesting how Kenya is becoming the next step for Nigerian startups, especially those in the fintech space, to springboard into eastern Africa.