Kuda Nigerian digital bank, has secured a $25 million Series A round of funding.
Kuda’s latest funding follows a $10 million seed round in November 2020, which was Africa’s highest ever seed round.
Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures led the round, with Target Global and other investors joining in.
Kuda rebranded in June 2019 after receiving a banking license from the Central Bank of Nigeria to launch a full-service digital bank. It was established in 2016 as lending platform Kudimoney.
Kuda became Nigeria’s first and only full-stack and mobile-first bank after gaining regulatory approval, allowing Nigerians to open a current account, save money, and earn annual interest.
“At Kuda, we believe that the businesses that can best harness technology and expertise will be the ones best placed to provide large numbers of people across Africa with access to a dramatically improved financial system that puts the customer first.
We recognize the great strides we’ve made to get to this point, but we also recognize how far we still have to go to achieve our goal of providing every African with strong, relevant, and affordable financial services,” said Babs Ogundeyi, Kuda’s CEO and co-founder.
Kuda has expanded to provide B2C and B2B banking services to over 600,000 customers in Nigeria since its launch in September 2019, processing over US$2 billion in transactions in February 2021, up from US$5.2 million in February 2020.
Kuda plans to use the funds to expand its operations in Nigeria and a few other African countries.
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