Nigeria-based payment service provider, Nomba, has secured $30 million in a Pre-Series B funding round led by Base10 Partners, a San Francisco-based investment firm. The funding will enable Nomba to develop bespoke payment solutions designed specifically for African businesses, helping them to streamline payment processes, increase efficiency, and deliver excellent customer experiences.
Nomba’s payment solutions will address the gaps in African businesses’ payment processes, which are often limited to generic point-of-sale machines that work independently of other business operations. With this funding, Nomba will provide payment solutions designed for the specific services that businesses offer. For example, restaurants will be able to access menus, manage inventory, and accept payments from the same hardware, while transport and logistics companies can directly connect their transactions to payments, creating a more seamless experience that increases sales and profitability.
In addition to payment solutions, Nomba will also provide a range of business tools, including invoicing and order management solutions, to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs for businesses across the continent.
Nomba is a fully licensed payment service provider in Nigeria, supporting over 300,000 businesses, from solopreneurs to large organizations, with a wide range of payment solutions and management and banking tools that enable better business processes. The company processes $1 billion in monthly transactions, representing a market-leading gross transaction value (GTV) for an African payment service provider.
Founded in 2016 as “Kudi.ai,” a chatbot integration that responds to financial requests on social apps, Nomba has evolved into a profitable, omnichannel payment service provider. Before this funding round, Nomba had only previously raised $5 million in funding, which it leveraged to successfully grow the business and efficiently deliver solutions that have positively impacted hundreds of thousands of businesses across Nigeria.
The oversubscribed funding round reflects the investors’ confidence in Nomba’s innovative solutions for African businesses. Along with Base10 Partners, Helios Digital Ventures, Shopify, Partech, and Khosla Ventures participated in the funding round.
According to Yinka Adewale, CEO and co-founder of Nomba, “We see payment as a business model, not just a product, and we want to make it easier for businesses to take advantage of all that is possible in their payment processes to support their continued growth and success. We have a long list of products we have been working on, and the funds we have raised, as well as the investors that have backed us, give us a lot of confidence about what can be achieved with more effective payment solutions in the hands of business owners.”
Luci Fonseca, Partner at Base10, said, “Nomba’s track record of innovation and capital efficiency makes it one of the most exciting startups in Africa. We are thrilled to be supporting them to deliver their game-changing solutions to power growth and continued success for businesses in Nigeria and beyond.”
The funding will be used to develop Nomba’s payment solutions for businesses in Nigeria and other African markets, as opportunities may emerge. The company plans to continue delivering innovative solutions that improve business processes, reduce costs, and increase profitability for businesses across the continent.
