Wave, a mobile money service located in Senegal, has raised $200 million in a Series A round of fundraising.
This is the largest-ever Series A funding round for a fintech business in Africa, and it values Wave at $1.7 billion.
Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund, Stripe, and Ribbit led the funding round.
Wave, which was founded by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk in 2018, is already the leading mobile money player in Senegal and is rapidly expanding in Côte d’Ivoire.
“From day one, we’ve been fiercely focused on inventing mobile money that’s easy-to-use and radically affordable,” said CEO and founder Drew Durbin. In Senegal, we’ve created something that people appreciate, but our objective is to deliver a contemporary financial network to everyone in Africa.”
Wave’s technology also differs from telecom-led mobile money, according to Durbin: “By building its own full-stack infrastructure — agent network, agent and consumer applications, QR cards, business collections, and disbursements — Wave has been able to fuel its growth to several million monthly active users and billions in annual volume.”
On the back of the funding, the company plans to grow into new African markets like Uganda and Mali, as well as deepen its existing footprint and improve its digital capabilities and operations.
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