Bloom, a Sudanese fintech startup, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding from Visa, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital (GFC), Goodwater Capital, and VentureSouq.
Other investors include football players Blaise Matuidi and Kieran Gibbs, co-founder of Dropbox Arash Ferdowsi, Nicolas Kopp, former U.S. CEO of N26, and early staff members of Revolut and Tide.
Ahmed Ismail, Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan, and Abdigani Diriye founded Bloom in July 2021. The company provides fee-free accounts that allow customers to save money in dollars and make purchases and payments in Sudanese pounds.
Additionally, it offers local and dollar cards as well as a function that allows users to receive free remittances from a number of nations across the world, primarily from those where the majority of the Sudanese diaspora dwell.
Bloom receives income from the interchange, interest on these deposits, and various supplementary sources.
One of the benefits of Bloom’s participation in the Fintech Fast Track Program of the international payment system was the investment from Visa.
A collaboration was established, and as a result, Bloom, the first business from Sudan to be accepted into the program, shifted from using Mastercard to using Visa for its payment methods.
For businesses like ours, the Visa investment is essential for a number of reasons. In addition to the investment, Visa Fintech Fast Track enables you to access these incentives in a straightforward manner. “One, aligning with Visa as a partner gives you a variety of perks, like speedier product launches, marketing support, and product support,” CEO Ahmed Ismail stated.
According to Bloom and Visa executives, this relationship and investment have the potential to significantly accelerate the uptake of Visa cards in Sudan and East Africa.
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