DIGITAL BANKING STARTUP RAISES 10 MILLION EUROS TO RESHAPE MOBILE BANKING IN NIGERIA AND BEYOND

A Paris-based fintech startup, has closed a $10 million-euro Series tagged  "FairMoney"  a mobile app to reshape the proper use of mobile banking in Nigeria and beyond.

Making this disclosure in a press conference, today in Paris, the  Chief Executive Officer  (CEO) Laurin Hainy, former CEO of Venture Builder and VC fund Le Studio VC, alongside CTO Matthieu Gendreau, ex-lead developer of PriceMatch and CPO Nicolas Berthozat said, FairMoney has  introduced the in-app payment function to its users, which allows them to top up their phone subscriptions, buy mobile data, pay electricity or internet bills, among others, already facilitating more than 400 payments daily. Other features, such as digital wallet and saving account are scheduled to launch soon.

“Our vision is to build a holistic financial platform for underserved customers in
emerging markets. We want to do that by offering an easy-to-use product to our
customers and become a financial one-stop-shop for them,” said Laurin Hainy,
CEO of FairMoney.

“We started with credit for small business owners and individuals, and we are expanding our services rapidly. Think digital bank for emerging market consumers.”

According to the World Bank, more than 2 billion people globally have limited
access to financial services and working capital. Access to loans for this segment
is extremely limited given that they do not have a credit score. FairMoney’s
approach to underwriting credit is based on a proprietary algorithm that applies
machine learning techniques to smartphone data. The average loans are 30 Euros and customers can grow their loan limits up to 400 Euros over time by showing good repayment habits.

“After backing digital banks in the US, UK, Latin America and South Asia, we are
excited to support one of the first companies to bring this model to Africa. We
believe that customers will ask a lot more of their banks–to be relevant, banks
will have to move from service providers to become financial mentors for their
customers,” said Ameya Upadhyay, principal at Flourish and FairMoney’s new
board member. “That’s where we see a massive global opportunity for FairMoney, which combines a top-notch banking infrastructure with a culture of obsessive customer focus.”

For decades, incumbent banks have only lent to large enterprise clients and left a big part of the population underserved. New technologies have created the
opportunity to include these consumers into the formal financial system for the
first time. Use cases for the FairMoney loan product are diverse–more than 60
percent of customers use the loans as working capital to run small- and micro-
businesses. The automatic underwriting process enables FairMoney to score
clients and disburse funds within 5 minutes.

Funds raised in this round will be used to scale the company’s engineering team
in order to develop a fully-fledged mobile banking offering in Nigeria and beyond.

Founded in 2017 by Laurin Hainy, Matthieu Gendreau, and Nicolas Berthozat, it is a mobile bank for emerging markets.

Having started in 2017 with mobile lending, the company is expanding its service offering rapidly to build a full-fledged digital bank focused on serving underserved consumers in large emerging markets, such as Nigeria. FairMoney has raised 15 million Euros to date from renowned investors such as Flourish, Speed invest, and the Partners of DST Global, among others, he said.