Bankly, a Nigerian startup has obtained a seed funding round of $ 2 million, led by Vault with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, Rising Tide Africa and Chrysalis Capital. The acquired fundraise has been set aside for increasing its 35,000 customer base in cash-dependent communities. This is by growing the number of the physical cash in points by expanding its 15,000 person agent network and plugging its API into partner networks.
Nigeria still is a country that has large cash dominance. The population of Nigerian adults is closely to 100 million adults. Half of them have little or no access to financial services.
The startup was founded in 2018 by Tomilolo Adejana and Fredrick Adams as the founders. Their aim is digitizing the thrift collections system identified as ajo or esusu. People in the informal sector widely use this because you can work completely offline. As much as the system is common, it has numerous risks. Risks such as security risks, lack of customer data are experienced here.Normally there are instances that the thrift collector goes missing with the money. Other assumptions are made that the thrift collector is dead. This leaves the people with no clue of where the savings are kept. Limited access is experienced whereby members cannot consistently save especially when absent in a particular location.
What Bankly has done is to allow people save money in both online and offline methods. Clients can make a deposit and withdraw cash with a Bankly agent. You can as well make payments using its app or USSD function.
There will be development of direct to customer products for its customer base. All these will be made available via its app and USSD channels. For the next upcoming three years, Bankly plans on reaching two million Nigerians who are unbanked.
