Moniepoint, which focuses on driving financial inclusion for MSMEs and individuals, received an additional $90m backing, after initially raising $110m in October 2024, including from several impact investors.
Moniepoint, a Nigerian fintech company headquartered in Lagos, has closed a series C funding round with more than $200m (€172m) in equity financing. The company originally raised $110m in October 2024, in a first phase led by private equity investors Development Partners International’s African Development (ADP) III fund. The first close also included the participation of Google’s Africa Investment Fund, West African private equity investor Verod Capital, and London-based impact investors Lightrock.
The extension of the round, which saw a further capital injection of $90m, was once again led by Development Partners International, alongside impact investor LeapFrog Investments, Dutch venture capital firm Alder Tree Investments, Visa, and the International Finance Corporation. Two European development finance institutions, Proparco and Swedfund also participated.
In parallel, Swiss impact investor Blue Earth Capital announced that it had bought a minority stake in the company for an undisclosed sum from British International Investment (BII) and from Moniepoint’s employee share option programme in partnership with Lightrock. This follows an earlier secondary investment made in February 2024 for the acquisition of part of BII’s stake in three funds across Africa and Asia.
Digital customer base
Moniepoint operates across all of Nigeria’s 36 states providing digital financial services to MSMEs and underserved consumers. The company says its customer base has exceeded 10 million active businesses and personal banking customers and that it processes digital payments with a transaction value of over $250bn annually.
Michael Joyce, director of investments for LeapFrog, said that during the due diligence process for Moniepoint, the company’s impact on narrowing the financial inclusion gap was made evident.
“The early assessment highlighted the potential of the firm to expand financial inclusion for Africa’s underserved MSMEs, a critical engine for growth and employment,” he said.
The proceeds from the round will be used towards Moniepoint’s continued growth. Ross Strike, Moniepoint’s senior vice president for M&A and investor relations, told Impact Investor the firm was exploring plans to expand into more African markets.
Growth
Co-founded by group CEO Tosin Eniolorunda and CTO Felix Ike, Moniepoint started in 2015 as a service provider creating financial products for banks, and has since grown to a multi-product digital bank offering payments, business and personal banking, credit, cross-border payments, and business management tools to its MSME clients and their customers and employees.
“We initially focused on providing business banking services and launched our POS [point of sale] solution in 2019,” said Strike, explaining that the company provides handheld POS terminals to businesses, allowing them to securely process in-person transactions such as credit and debit card payments.
“We then expanded into personal banking in 2023 and have seen rapid adoption since. Over the last 12 months, we have further expanded our suite of digital banking services with the launch of MonieWorld – a remittance solution targeting the UK market and MonieBook, an online POS system offering integrated business operations and bookkeeping solutions,” he added. MonieWorld targets the African diaspora in the UK.
Moniepoint achieved unicorn status upon reaching a valuation of $1bn at the first close of the series C round, announced last October.
Financial inclusion
Around half of Nigeria’s adult population has limited access to financial services with a bank branch concentration of 4.45 per 100,000 people – around 15% of the global average.
According to a 2024 Moniepoint report, only around 12% of Nigerian SMEs access financial services from conventional banks, with the majority of small businesses relying on support from friends and family to finance their operations.
Strike said that although the vast majority of businesses in Nigeria remain underserved by traditional banks, most Nigerians are nearing a point where they can access digital banking solutions, largely thanks to the growth of Moniepoint and other fintechs in recent years.
“However, other critical products such as credit, saving, insurance, and business management tools are in a nascent state. Nigeria is one of the continent’s most sophisticated banking markets and has a higher rate of penetration than most of sub-Saharan Africa, creating a huge opportunity to address the financial inclusion gap on a larger scale,” he added.
Through its agent network, Moniepoint says it has significantly increased businesses’ and consumers’ access to essential financial services and currently serves four million active businesses each month, the vast majority of which are MSMEs. Around one third of the MSMEs had previously been unable to access formal credit lines.
Speaking about the impact of the financial inclusion gap on meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and climate targets, Strike said that until most of the country’s population has access to basic financial services – specifically digital payments, savings, and credit – economic development will be stunted. Economic development is ultimately a critical driver for achieving most SDGs, he added.
“For climate initiatives, investment often requires either business or consumer borrowing, which technology-enabled financial inclusion unlocks by providing reliable and structured data for lending institutions to better assess creditworthiness,” he added.
