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Google and DPI Back African Fintech Moniepoint in 0M Round
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Google and DPI Back African Fintech Moniepoint in $110M Round

African fintech Moniepoint just closed $110 million in new funding and received Google’s Africa Investment Fund as a new investor. The Series C round was led by Development Partners International’s African Development Partners (ADP) III fund.

Other investors also participated, including African private equity firm Verod Capital and existing investor Lightrock.

Moniepoint, also backed by QED Investors, British International Investment (BII) and Endeavor Catalyst, has raised more than $180 million since its launch in 2015.

right Financial Timesthe round makes Moniepoint a unicorn — a private company with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The African fintech was last valued at just over $800 million in a round led by QED two years ago.

Moniepoint initially focused on providing infrastructure and payment solutions for banks and financial institutions before becoming a business banking service provider, an area in which it has found remarkable success.

African fintech targets small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria by providing working capital, business expansion loans and business management tools such as expense management (business payment cards), accounting solutions and accounting and insurance.

The fintech, which drives the majority of point-of-sale (POS) transactions in Nigeria as the largest merchant acquirer in the country, claims to process over 800 million transactions with a total monthly value of over $17 billion .

Moniepoint says it will use the new funding to accelerate its growth in Africa (90% of its business comes from Nigeria) while building digital payments, banking, foreign exchange (FX), credit and business management tools. The 9-year-old fintech recently forayed into the personal banking market and claims to have seen 20x customer growth in the past year.