Digital Banking Platform Umba Raises $15 Million in Series A Round

Umba, the digital bank for emerging markets announced a $15 million Series A to continue rapid growth in Nigeria and expand into new African markets.

The round was led by Costanoa Ventures and joined by Lux Capital, Palm Drive Capital, Banana Capital and Streamlined Ventures, as well as previous investors, including Lachy Groom and ACT Ventures. The company also received new angel investment from neobanking pioneers such as Monzo founder Tom Blomfield and executives from NuBank.

Umba brings a wide range of transparent and accessible financial products to those underserved by legacy banks across Africa. The African digital banking platform offers customers an unparalleled, full mobile banking application, opening up a range of new financial services that are transparent, low fee, and informed by analytics to intelligently service customers.

According to the CEO, the new funding will allow Umba to expand its operations and product offerings in Nigeria and prepare to launch in new markets. Over the next 12 months, Umba is set to roll out new products, including debit cards, savings accounts and stock trading, to enable their customers to take control of their financial lives.

Umba CEO Tiernan Kennedy commented:"This is a great milestone for Umba, and we're excited to bring in new partners to fuel our growth. Mark Selcow at Costanoa Ventures is a seasoned operator and investor who brings extensive company building experience to our Board. There is great potential for Umba to provide useful, accessible products and services that financially empower underserved customers. We see huge growth potential in Nigeria as well as some exciting new markets - we'll have more on that later this year".

"This investment allows us to continue to hire the best people across banking and Fintech to build something new from the ground up, centred around our customers' everyday needs. Over the past year, we've experienced rapid growth in our customer base and payment volume, which validates just how much customer demand is in the market for our product,"expressed CFO and Co-Founder, Barry O'Mahony.

Source: Business Insider Africa