ICYMI fintech funding round-up: Kippa, Payall, Trek Health and more
Our weekly fintech round-up for you to get the latest funding news from around the world. Featuring Kippa, KolayBi, Neem, Payall, and Trek Health.
Nigerian financial management and payments platform for small businesses, Kippa, has landed $8.4 million in a new funding round.
The round saw participation from Goodwater Capital, TEN13 VC, Rocketship VC, Saison Capital, Crestone VC, VentureSouq, Horizon Partners and Vibe Capital.
Founded in June 2021, Kippa provides digital business and financial management solutions for African SMEs to enable them to grow. It offers business owners the chance to incorporate their business, open bank accounts, receive and send payments, build online stores and manage finances on one platform.
Kippa previously raised pre-seed funding of $3.2 million in November 2021 and has since obtained a licence from Central Bank of Nigeria and claims over 500,000 merchants in its network with annualised transaction exceeding $3 billion.
Cloud-based online accounting and finance software developer KolayBi has secured $1.15 million in a new funding round, in which TechOne VC and Turkey’s leading venture capital funds participated.
It intends to use the funds towards developing new products to serve 100,000 customers by 2023 as per its growth strategy.
“In the third quarter of this year, we are focusing on growing abroad, mainly in the European and Middle Eastern markets,” says Gokhan Boyana, KolayBi’s CEO. “In line with this goal, we are going to offer KolayBi SaaS to foreign SMEs.”
Founded in 2017 and based in Turkey, KolayBi offers “time-saving and cost-effective” solutions to facilitate the finance and accounting processes of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and enable them to track their financial data from a single platform.
“When customers correctly enter their revenues, expenses, and costs into KolayBi’s system, they can track their profits, losses, and instant cash flows,” the firm says.
Additionally, the company also plans on integration with all banks in Turkey with a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering, enabling KolayBi users to have a unique account number and ATM card.
Pakistani embedded finance platform Neem has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round.
Investors include SparkLabs Fintech, Arif Habib Ltd, Cordoba Logistics and Ventures, Taarah Ventures, My Asia VC, Concept Vines, Building Capital, Outrun Ventures and other angels.
The money will enable Neem’s embedded finance platform bring financial wellness to Pakistan’s underbanked communities – both individuals and businesses.
“The core of our model is embedding Neem into various value chains across diverse communities and our B2B2C platform is leveraging deep trust and relationship with already existing platforms,” says Naeem Zamindar, co-founder at Neem.
“We amplify those platforms by bringing financial services to their end-customers at a very accessible and low acquisition cost.”
Founded in 2019 by fintech entrepreneurs Nadeem Shaikh, Vladimira Briestenska and Naeem Zamindar, Neem embeds financial products and services into communities across diverse sectors, including agriculture, MSMEs, e-commerce, fintech, logistics, healthcare and others.
Payall, the first-ever bank processor for cross-border payments and international money transfers, has closed a $10 million seed round led by a16z.
Additional participants in the round are lead seed round investor Motivate VC along with PS27 Ventures and Bridgeport Partners, with SAFE conversions from RRE Ventures and Transcard. Several angel investors also took part.
Founded in 2018 and based in Miami, US, Payall claims to be the world’s first bank processor for cross-border payments. Its software allows regulated financial institutions around the world to execute cross-border payments “quickly and securely”.
It also automates compliance and processes to protect financial institutions and their customers and enables transparency to foreign payer KYC, sanctions checks, commercial activity documentation and novel artifacts to prevent illicit activity.
Payall aims to use the funds to accelerate its product capabilities, expansion and revenue growth.
Trek Health, a payment and insurance workflow automation platform for mental health provider groups, has closed a $2.7 million seed round led by Lionheart Ventures.
Individual and institutional investors participating in the round include Founder Collective, Jack and Max Altman of Altman Capital, Matt Brezina of Ford Street Ventures, Snapdocs CEO Aaron King, Okta CEO Frederic Kerrest, former Salesforce chief strategy officer Clarence So, former One Medical VP of Operations Rich Menendez, among others.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in San Mateo, California, Trek Health’s platform offers solutions for mental health providers including instant claim reimbursement, automatic claim generation and submissions and payer enrollments across 900+ insurance networks.
“Our goal is to enable mental health providers and facilities to spend all of their time on care delivery, instead of tedious tasks to get paid,” says Trek Health CEO and Founder Dilpreet Sahota.
“We are starting with mental health, and plan on expanding into other healthcare verticals over time.”