According to www.techcrunch.com, Afriex, which is an app used to send money to Africa from oversees — raises a $1.2 million seed round.
The company started in 2019 when one of its founders, Tope Alabi, relocated from the USA to Lagos, Nigeria. While in Nigeria, he tried to send money from his US bank account to his Nigerian bank account but found the process to be expensive and time-consuming. Tope knew there had to be a more cost-effective and faster way to transfer money from the US to Nigeria. With little money left from his savings, he teamed up with Obirije John, an established software developer who had previous experience working for a startup remittance company. Together, they founded Afriex, a peer to peer mobile payments app that makes sending money to Africa simple.
The app is now available in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, customers can only send money to and from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Canada and the U.S.
According to www.techcrunch.com, with the new investment, the Lagos and San Francisco-based startup is looking to scale up by growing the team and expanding to other markets.
Pan-African VC firm Launch Africa led the seed round. Other investors include Y Combinator, SoftBank Opportunity Fund, Future Africa, Brightstone VC, Processus Capital, Uncommon Ventures, A$AP Capital, Precursor Ventures and Ivernet Holdings. Angel investors like Russell Smith, Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon, Furqan Rydhan and Andrea Vaccari also took part.
The SoftBank Opportunity Fund, a subsidiary of the SoftBank Group, targets founders of color in the U.S. running early-stage startups. Since launching in June 2020, it has invested in 22 startups and Afriex seems to be the only one catering to a set of users in the U.S. and another continent.
