Ugandan multi-currency wallet Eversend crowdfunds $706,000

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
2nd June 2020

Eversend, a Uganda-based multi-currency e-wallet, has landed $706,000 in crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs.

The start-up has issued 8.74% in equity to investors, valuing the business at roughly $7.4 million. Having already gone 15% over its fundraise target, Eversend still has a few more weeks before the crowdfunding campaign ends.

Eversend’s founder and CEO Stone Atwine says investments from institutional investors will follow

Founded in 2017, the fintech offers its now 40,000 registered users a digital wallet and currency exchange across a variety of currencies. Users don’t need access to the internet to send their funds, as the start-up uses an unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) channel.

The company says it is growing its user base by roughly 30% month-on-month.

And with a money lending license in Uganda already in the bag, Eversend is looking to expand its offering to personal loans, as well as insurance, savings, investment and merchant payment products.

Eversend’s founder and CEO Stone Atwine told Disrupt Africa that the Seedrs campaign is part of a larger fundraising round which will include institutional investors, but details on the total size of the round have not been disclosed.

“It’s a great way to create a community of user investors. There’s nothing better than customers owning a part of the business,” said Atwine.

CEO Atwine previously spent time as a country manager of a payroll software company in Kenya, after which he co-founded two other start-ups: money transfer service Use Remit, and Yetu Credit Finance, a fintech providing salary-based loans to government employees in Uganda.

Eversend says it will use the funds for product development, user acquisition, and regulatory compliance, as it looks to expand its offering to Nigeria, Francophone Africa, and Europe.

Some funds will also be kept back in the company’s accounts as working capital to bulk out Eversend’s netting off reserves.