South African BaaS platform Jumo raises $120m in funding
South African fintech start-up Jumo, which provides a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform for emerging market entrepreneurs, has raised $120 million in its latest funding round.
Jumo founder and CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball
The round was led by Fidelity Management, Visa and Kingsway and brings the fintech’s total capital raised to date to around $200 million.
Prior investment rounds have included Leapfrog, Goldman Sachs, Finnfund, Proparco, Vostok Emerging Finance and Brook Asset Management.
Founded in 2015, Jumo provides a range of infrastructure and financial services for banks and fintech platforms, including core banking, underwriting, KYC (know your customer) and fraud detection services.
The company also uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide access to credit and reduce lending risk for emerging market entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and micro SMEs.
Jumo claims its platform has so far been used to make 120 million loans, totalling $3.5 billion, to more than 18 million people and small businesses in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire and Pakistan.
The company says the new funds will go towards scaling its platform, developing its services and increasing the number of financial products on offer to SMEs, as well as providing longer term lending options for merchants and bigger businesses.
It adds the cash will also go towards expanding into new markets such as Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon.
