The deal, which follows Float’s $17 million equity and debt seed funding raised eight months ago, will enable Float attain its goal to become the financial operating system for Africa’s small and medium-sized businesses.

Jesse Ghansah, who co-founded Float with Barima Effah Adjei in 2021, said discussions that led to the acquisition kicked off last year, and 10 months down the line, the deal has finally been closed.

Float has a vision to be the financial nervous system of every business. In this regard, the company is rethinking the modern financial tech stack, which involved making it easier for users to take control of their growth by combining credit, business payments, and financial management into one powerful platform.

Backed by Y Combinator, Ingressive Capital, Soma Capital, Magic Fund and others, Float is strategy about its endeavours. The lack of proper accounting and bookkeeping practices among business owners are the challenges that Float seeks to tackle with the acquisition of Accounteer.

Per Techcabal, Ghansah said he had been monitoring some accounting startups since the identification of these problems. Accounteer’s achievements and milestones of becoming the cloud accounting software choice for over 14,000 SMBs in Nigeria and beyond over the years, triggered the choice. 

Float sees Accounteer as a potential benefit for its ecosystem of products and services, enabling them attain greater goals as they scale into new markets.

Accounteer empowers small businesses to enable them take control of their finances, reducing dependence on external factors.

Founded by Merijn Campsteyn in 2015, the company’s accounting tools help in the management of inventory, payments acceptance, printing of receipts, generation of real-time accounting reports and others.

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With reach across Ghana and Nigeria, Float is resolved to set up offices in Kenya and South Africa after getting licenses to operate in these countries by the second quarter of 2022. 

The company also plans to improve its cash management platform and launch new credit products tailored to specific business verticals and industries with the investment.

The seed round, which included a $7,000,000 equity and $10,000,000 debt funding from Cauris, also had participation from Tiger Global and JAM Fund, the investment firm of Justin Mateen, co-founder of Tinder, who co-led the equity fund. Other VC firms involved in the equity round included Kinfolk, Soma Capital, Ingressive Capital and Magic Fund.

Angel investors such as Micheal Seibel; CEO of Y Combinator, Sandy Kory of Horizon Partners, Ramp founders Karim Atiyeh and Eric Glyman, Gregory Rockson of mPharma and Dutchie founders Zach Lipson and Ross Lipson, also took part in Float’s seed round.

Float was founded by Jesse Ghansah and Barima Effah in 2020. Initially known as Swipe, the company rebranded as Float and went live with its product in June 2021. The idea for the YC-backed Ghanaian fintech came during the chief executive’s time at OMG Digital, a media company he founded that also got into YC, in 2016.

The company focuses on ensuring financial accessibility by providing credit facilities to help businesses grow and overcome challenges gotten from traditional banks.

Added to its offerings for businesses to cover cash flow gaps are its software tools to help them manage accounts and wallets in one dashboard, automate bills, vendor or supplier payments and invoice collections. 

Float seeks to serve as the financial operating system for Africa’s small and medium businesses, hence its continuous endeavours. The company’s features also include invoice advance, opening a business account, payment links, managing budgets and spend cards.

Not limited to the mentioned products, Float has recently introduced some more features including revenue advances and instant payouts which helps small businesses leverage its platform to tap into their revenues instantly rather than through gateways. Its invoice factoring helps businesses with outstanding invoices get cash advances.

Since inception, Float’s cash flow management and spend platform has onboarded hundreds of businesses in a wide range of industries like retail and manufacturing, fintech, e-commerce, media and health.

The company affirms to have hit $10,000,000 in credit spend and cash advances to businesses in that time, and has seen its payment transaction — invoicing and vendor payments — volume, in eight figures, increase 26x.

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