Nigerian fintech NowNow raises $13 million, to scale its financial products across Africa

NowNow Digital Systems, a Nigeria-based fintech expanding financial services to the unbanked and underserved has raised $13 million in its seed round funding led by NeoVision Ventures, with participation from DLF Family Office and Shadi Abdulhadi, to expand its financial offerings across Africa.  

• The fund will be used to grow its platform, team, and marketing, and prepare the fintech for the scale it's about to commence, it claims. The fintech also plans to introduce new products to enhance its existing consumer banking, agency banking, and merchant payment solutions and expand into Angola and Liberia.
• Launched in 2018, NowNow is an African B2B and B2C fintech startup providing financial services to SMEs, agents, and consumers using its technology stack that digitizes cash payments and provides financial empowerment. Its app enables users to send and receive money and also pay bills.
• NowNow evolved from a platform for financial inclusion and job creation founded by Sahir Berry and Mahesh Nair in 2016, to a mobile wallet in 2017, and now fast becoming an embedded finance platform. It currently has over 50,000 agents across Nigeria providing financial services like sending and receiving money and paying bills.
• Playing in the fintech space in Nigeria alongside the likes of Kuda, Carbon, and FairMoney, NowNow aims to distinguish itself by developing Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled technology that will allow users to tap in across its product ecosystem and use physical or virtual cards on NFC-enabled phone or POS, including tapping from wallet to wallet using two phones.
• The fintech targets 5,000 SMEs with its platform and NFC-enabled solution by the year-end and aims to increase its fintech solution users to 1 million from 200,000 by December.