24-Year-Old Kenyan Founder Secures $4.9M To Transform Stablecoin-Powered Payments
Pan-African payment orchestration platform, HoneyCoin, has raised $4.9 million in a seed round led by Flourish Ventures. Other investors included Visa and TLcom, Stellar Development Foundation, Lava, and more, according to a press release shared with POCIT.
The Nairobi-based startup tackles inefficiencies in global financial infrastructure, particularly for businesses in pre-emerging markets. It gives businesses a unified, stablecoin-compatible platform for collections, treasury management, settlements, and FX management.
By building a stablecoin-based liquidity engine and bypassing fragmented rails, HoneyCoin gives businesses instant or same-day settlements, compared to the traditional four to seven-business-day timeframe.
David Nandwa launched the company in 2020 during the pandemic and became one of Africa’s youngest fintech CEOs at the age of 19.
About HoneyCoin
Nandwa and his team aimed to develop a financial operating system for a hybrid future, where fiat and blockchain infrastructure converge to facilitate faster, compliant, and cost-efficient cross-border money movement.
Since its launch in 2020, the platform has seen rapid growth, serving over 350 enterprise customers and hundreds of thousands of consumers through its flagship consumer app, Peer. Collectively. It powers payments for millions of end-users across four continents, processing hundreds of dollars in transactions to over $150 million in monthly transaction volume.
It operates in more than 45 countries, including across 15 African markets, as well as in the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK.
The $4.9 million raise
The new fund will help scale its operation, expand its product suite, and bring on new senior hires to strengthen its position as a prominent player in the payments industry. The round was led by Flourish Ventures, which first backed HoneyCoin in 2021.
“We first backed HoneyCoin in 2021 based on David’s technical expertise and regulatory vision,” Efayomi Carr, Principal at Flourish Ventures, said. “Since then, he’s built a licensed, profitable, and high-growth infrastructure platform powering nearly 300 financial institutions and processing billions in transactions annually.
“Just as Apple redefined computing and Visa transformed global commerce, we believe financial infrastructure is undergoing another once-in-a-generation shift. This raise enables us to lead that transformation, across Africa and other global markets, by building resilient, interoperable infrastructure for the future of finance,” Nandwa said.
Image: HoneyCoin
