Bitmama.io closed this funding from a group of foreign and domestic investors ten months after its initial pre-seed round of $350,000.

The latest round is led by Unicorn Growth Capital and Launch Africa Ventures, with participation from Adaverse and follow-on from Flori Ventures, which led its earlier pre-seed round. New investors in the round include, Tekedia Capital,  GreenHouse Capital, ODBA, Five35 Ventures, Chrysalis Capital, Enrich Africa, Thrive Africa,  Angellist Ventures, and angel investors including, CELO founders; Rene Reinsberg, and Marek Olszewski, and Honey Ogundeyi.

Bitmama’s new pre-seed round will be used to expand the company’s operational presence, strengthen its team across different markets, consolidate its product offerings, and plot market penetration across Africa, while rapidly scaling new use cases for cryptocurrency within the continent.

At present, the company’s major products are the Bitmama exchange, which allows users to access virtual assets and explore several cryptocurrency use cases, then Changera, a social payment solution that allows non-crypto-savvy customers to use their money without limits, from anywhere in the world.

Bitmama is a highly-secure blockchain payment platform pinoneering “Crypto Beyond Trading” for Africans globally.

The company is approaching the African crypto market differently by promoting the awareness and adoption of crypto through innovative product offerings including its virtual crypto debit cards, which afford over $10,000 in monthly spending limits. 

Powered by VISA, these cards are funded with stablecoins and can work anywhere in the world for online transactions.

Currently in three African markets; Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya, Bitmama’s users are able to trade several cryptocurrencies, use their debit cards for regular online payments, pay utilities and  perform transactions such as staking to hedge against currency devaluation. 

Bitmama has built a distributed remote team across Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya , working to democratize the highly fragmented payment system in Africa. The goal, according to the team, is to leverage the blockchain in building solutions to power seamless peer-to-peer payments across the continent.

Ruth Iselema, Founder and CEO of Bitmama Inc. while commenting on the round said ”Bitmama has made a number of strides in the past year. We’ve rolled out two products, both of which are fast closing in on 100,000 users across the African market and recording impressive daily active users across our range of product offerings despite the market dynamics. We are building Africa’s most user-friendly, innovative blockchain company, and we are glad to have the backing of seasoned investors and partners who have walked similar turfs. We are privileged to learn from their blended experiences across corporate and blockchain business verticals. We’re  confident of the results we’ve achieved so far and  we’re set to build the next big solution that the market deserves.”

Also speaking on the round, Janade Du Plessis, Managing General Partner at Launch Africa said “As a prominent Pan-African VC fund, we see our partnership with Bitmama as a way to truly allow all Africans with the ability to trade and manage cryptocurrencies, and digital assets conveniently and universally, creating a significant impact on allowing more people to trade and transact across Africa.  This is something that we specifically value in our Fund and what Bitmama in particular delivers.”

Hema Vallabh, Founding Partner at Five35 Ventures said “Being a leading female-focused VC fund, we at Five35 Ventures look forward to helping Ruth and her dynamic team scale Bitmama, especially seeing the growth of Changera, the remittance platform that allows all Africans to transact internationally at much cheaper rates than established remittance companies in the market.”

The investment will enable Zanifu to upgrade its platform and extend its stock-financing to reach more micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).

Saviu Ventures, Launch Africa Ventures, Sayani Investments and several angel investors from Kenya and Nigeria participated in the round, which brings Zanifu’s total funding received so far to $1,200,000.

Zanifu provides short-term stock-financing of up to $2,000 to MSMEs in Kenya and is set to add 15,000 FMCG retailers within one year.

Founded by Steve Biko and Sebastian Mithika, some of the company’s partners include Unilever, Nestle, Soko, Coca-Cola, P&G and Brookside.

Biko and Mithika founded Zanifu in 2017 and so far, the company affirms to have extended 85,000 working capital loans worth over $13,000,000 to 7,000 businesses in Kenya.

The informal businesses in Kenya are an integral part of the economy contributing 33.8% of the country’s GDP and providing 83.4% of employment outside of small-scale agriculture. 

However, access to financing remains the main impediment to growth for these micro and small businesses. And thus, over the last few years, fintech companies like Zanifu have introduced products that are tailored to the financing needs of the MSMEs.

Zanifu works with a number of manufacturers and distributors to extend the credit to these small businesses with retailers already sourcing products from the startup’s partners qualifying for the financing. Zanifu has created platforms for manufactures, distributors and retailers that ensure seamless ordering, payment, tracking and fulfilment.

Retailers borrow through Zanifu’s loan app, where they upload information that includes historical purchase data. The retailers are then assigned a credit limit, after its algorithm scores them, within six hours after signing up. Retailers have up to a month to pay back the loans, which attract an interest rate of 3.5 to 5%.

Zanifu, which has a presence throughout Kenya, is now eyeing Ghana and Uganda. A regional presence will step-up competition for the likes of Uganda’s Numida and Nigeria’s Payhippo, some of the fintechs providing unsecured financing to small businesses.