A Nigerian banking-as-a-service provider, Anchor has raised $2.4 million in seed funding to scale their product offerings.
Goat Capital, founded by Justin Kan, served as the lead investor in the financing round. FoundersX, Rebel Fund, and other previous investors, such as Y Combinator and Byld Ventures, also participated.
The fintech company received over $1 million in pre-seed capital a year ago before this newest raise. Anchor’s objective was to give developers tools, dashboards, and APIs to help them embed and construct banking solutions.
“If you look at the scope of product today, even though there were a few other players that have been in the market before us, there is no one that has the scope of offering that we have in the market today,” the CEO and Co-founder Olamide Sobowale told TechCrunch said.
In the congested fintech sector in Nigeria, where there are few BaaS providers, Anchor competes with JUMO, Maplerad, OnePipe, and Bloc.
Anchor collaborates with licenced financial institutions. It asserts that by doing this, businesses can reduce the time it takes to develop financial products from years to days.
When the fintech first started, it solely served customer accounts. Anchor’s APIs now enable business accounts, card issuance, bill payments, bulk disbursements, cross-border payments, and developer-only features including an audit log system and developer webhooks, according to co-founder and CEO Segun Adeyemi.
Around 30 consumers were onboarded when Anchor went operational in August of last year. There are currently about 270 of them, with about 63 of them online and conducting transactions on the platform.
Fintech companies, SaaS providers, e-commerce businesses/marketplaces, and other tech-enabled companies are among its clients. Some of its clients include Bujeti, Pennee, SeamlessHR, LifeBank, Waza, and Zit.ng.
