August 31, 2022

YC-Backed Nigerian Banking Platform Raises $1M

Nigeria-based fintech startup, Anchor has received over $1M in investment to help expand its workforce and services. 

The startup fund program is backed by fund program, Y Combinator, and other venture capital firms, including Byld Ventures, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and angel investors such as the founder of SeamlessHR, Emmanuel Okeleji. 

Co-founded in 2021 by Segun AdeyemiOlamide Sobowale, and Gbekeloluwa Olufotebi, the banking-as-a-service platform, allows consumers to embed accounts, cards, payments, lending, and other financial features to their products within minutes. 

“We’re now seeing a new development where businesses want to offer different products and financial services beyond just payments,” said CEO Adeyemi in an interview with TechCrunch

“We strongly believe that the way is not just by latching banking-as-a-service on a payment platform, but there must be proper banking as a service platform built with the right infrastructure and go-to-market strategy. [So] that’s the problem we decided to solve as a team. The full end-to-end infrastructure for startups to be able to build, embed, and launch financial services.” 

The seven-month-old startup will give consumers APIs, dashboards, and tools that will assist their developers with embedding banking products. 

According to the website, Anchor’s mission is to simplify the complexities of embedding finance features so fintech businesses can easily add new tools to their businesses within minutes. 

Kumba Kpakima

Kumba Kpakima is a reporter at POCIT. A documentary about the knife crime epidemic in the UK got her a nomination for the UK's #30toWatch Young Journalists of the Year.