Sending money from the Ough. S. to Nigeria generally are a painstaking process. For remittance platforms like Western Joining, it will cost a transfer amount and take between yourself to five business days for cash sent from a U. Azines. debit card to enter a particular Nigerian bank account .
Crypto remittance networks are rising to the situation of fixing these cross-border payment issues by decreases time and fees . Just yesterday, we outlined Flux , a Nigerian fintech solving this problem in the present YC W2021 batch. Today, a single more YC-backed startup, Afriex — but from the The actual 2020 batch — is probably raising a $1. b million seed round.
The company founded by Tope Alabi and John Obirije in 2019 provides instant, zero-fee transactions to Africans at home as well the diaspora . It allows users into deposit cash on the request, send money to a banking accounts or another user, and take away money to a connected loss mitigation department or debit card .
Like other crypto remittance platforms, Afriex has built their business on stablecoins — cryptocurrency backed by the usd . In essence, dee engineering buys cryptocurrency in one the country and sells it within to offer better exchange terms . This is compared to better-known platforms like European Union and Wise that use traditional banking systems .
Last year while the new venture graduated from YC, getting this done claimed to be processing regarding $500, 000 per month towards transaction fees and is treated in over 30 destinations . At the time, Afriex was only present in Nigeria and the U. S. Regrettably having started operations to Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda, Afriex claims to be account millions of dollars each month . On its website, although , the primary, Afriex states that prospective buyers can only send money from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Europe, and the U. S .
With the new obtain, the Lagos and San Francisco-based startup is looking to positively scale up by increasing the team and expanding to markets .
Pan-African VC firm Launch Africa led the seed round. Other investors can comprise Y Combinator, SoftBank Ability Fund, Future Africa, Brightstone VC, Processus Capital, Unheard of Ventures, A$AP Capital, Antecesor Ventures, and Ivernet Communauté . Angel option traders like Russell Smith, Mandela Schumacher-Hodge Dixon, Furqan Rydhan, and Andrea Vaccari likewise took part .
The SoftBank Opportunity Fund , a subsidiary of the SoftBank Neighborhood, targets founders of color or purity in the U. S. flowing early-stage startups . Since launching in April 2020, it has invested in 23 startups and Afriex are the only one catering to a variety of users in the US and yet another continent .
This is due to Alabi’s parental input as an immigrant child which had a mix of both planets. It was difficult to email money to Nigeria brilliant experience as a blockchain retailer at Consensys made the musician realize he could solve problematic .
“We would go back home every two years and not only that, I would always take note of the concepts missing and what could become improved . I would find myself having to pay on behalf of foreign expenses with financial resources that was sitting in a COUNTRY bank account, ” said Alabi. “Traditional remittance companies experienced been so slow and not cheap that I knew I could execute it better with crypto . Remittance is the best as well as the most important use case for crypto. Our goal is to create the world’s largest remittance company, starting with emerging throughout . ”
