Ivorian fintech Julaya raises $5 million in extended pre-Series A

Julaya, an Ivory Coast-based fintech has raised an additional $5 million in its extended pre-Series A round, bringing its total raise in the round to $7 million, with which it intends to expand its offering.

• The capital will be used to further support its expansion plans across Francophone West Africa, including opening offices in Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso. It will also be used to hire more talents and improve product development, it claims.
• Julaya, a payment-focused fintech provides business-to-business (B2B) payments for businesses in Francophone West Africa through mobile money channels. The fintech has expanded to Senegal, to take mobile money penetration higher.
• In its operating markets, Julaya enables users usually small and large enterprises to make bulk payments to other businesses and their unbanked workers via mobile money channels. These businesses are able to perform different transactions on Julaya's platform while also accessing the accounting system there.
• The fintech also offers an expense management feature which is used by up to 40% of its users and has been adopted by traditional and non-digitized small clients. It also provides 'Cash and Collect', a feature for collecting cash from businesses without having to go to banks. It has recorded a 500% increase in its revenues and 5xed its processing amounts, it says.
• Speedinvest led the pre-Series A extension round, with participation from EQ2 Ventures, Kibo Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, Jedar Capital, Orange Ventures, Saviu, 50 Partners, Mohamed Diabi and Edouard Mendy.