In the year In 2011, the Nigerian government launched a financial inclusion initiative and set a goal to include 80% of the country’s adult population. Although only 64 percent of the target could be achieved by the end of the decade, one positive from the exercise is that achieving financial inclusion across the country is still an ongoing process, and fintechs have been involved alongside banks in recent years.
Agency banking startups are major innovators in this space. Their branchless banking system with thousands of physical agents provides financial services to the unbanked and unbanked in rural and semi-urban areas. NowNow Digital Systems, such a platform launched in 2018, has raised $13 million in a round, which will allow the four-year-old startup to expand and expand its service offering across Africa.
When CEO Sahir Berry and co-founder Mahesh Nair founded NowNow in 2016, they wanted to provide solutions for financial inclusion and job creation, two of the most pressing pain points they felt facing Nigeria and the rest of the continent. According to Berry, in collaboration with an external third-party partner, NowNow launched the mobile wallet in late 2017 but soon realized it needed to build the technology, setting the stage for going to market next year. “Doing this and building our proprietary IP has changed our business,” the CEO said. “So, in the beginning, we provided digital banking solutions to consumers and businesses. Today, we are becoming an inclusive financial platform.
It now claims to have built an end-to-end financial products ecosystem for agents, personal consumers and small businesses. Its flagship product, similar to agency banking platforms such as OPay, TeamApt and Nomba, includes over 50,000 agents across the country to help Nigerians send and receive money and pay bills. Fintech has a consumer-facing product where people can send and receive money, pay bills and access value-added services like insurance and loans through debit cards and wallets in apps. The service is available to users with smartphones and feature phones; However, for the latter, they have to visit agents to get other services, Berry said. Similar digital banking providers in this segment include the likes of Kuda, Carbon and FairMoney.
According to Berry, NowNow wants to set itself apart from the competition by developing NFC-enabled technology that allows users to use virtual or physical cards with an NFC-enabled phone or POS within its ecosystem of products. Tap from wallet to wallet using two phones. This product has been made available to a few small businesses for testing. On the other hand, NowNow typically provides these SMEs with a business-in-a-box platform with tools and value-added services such as storefront and marketplace.
“It is an end-to-end integrated platform for SMEs including logistics and we are the first company in Nigeria to offer such an end-to-end platform,” Berry said. In the past, we have built all this technology and I.P. Since we are owned, we have also become a BaaS company supplying our products to many fintechs in Nigeria and Africa. We also have prominent financial institutions that use our products to provide white label solutions to their clients. So we minimize the risk of playing in the consumer and B2B space.
It is now targeting 5,000 SMEs with a business-in-a-box solution including NFC-enabled technology. On the consumer side, fintech claims to serve up to 200,000 customers; It hopes to increase the number to 1 million by December. “We are on track to deliver nearly $5 billion in GMV across all platforms by the end of this year,” Berry added.
With the newly secured funds, NowNow plans to grow its platform, team and marketing, which the company says is “ready to take.” The fintech, recently selected to participate in MasterCard’s Start Path Global program for seed, series A and later startups, is looking to introduce new products to enhance its existing consumer banking, agency banking and merchant payment solutions and expand into African countries. Fintechs rarely flow from Nigeria to Angola and Liberia.
“We want to work in countries where we know that the infrastructure is paralyzed and fintech can come in and provide solutions to solve the situation. Angola is one of the places where we know that the digital payment space is lagging behind and we can start there next month. Liberia is another country where we are preparing to set up an operation.”
The seed round welcomed the participation of several firms including lead investors Dubai-based venture capital firm and Studio Neovision Ventures, India-based DLF Family Office and Shadi Abdulhadi.
