BitPesa, a start-up for digital foreign exchange and payment, has raised $2.2 million in a bridge round, per SEC filing. Although, it’s not clear who the backers are, the funding, however, was a combination of debt and equity.
The Nairobi-based BitPesa was pursuing to raise a total of $2.5 million but came short of the target by $288,896. The new round brings the total disclosed amount raised by BitPesa throughout 2018 to at least $7.23 million.
Founded in 2013 by Amy Ludlum, Charlene Chen and Elizabeth Rossiello, BitPesa now has branches in Lagos, Luxembourg, London, Madrid and Dakar. The company acquired Madrid’s TransferZero for an undisclosed amount in order to set up in Spain.
In totality, the firm has raised at least $15.64 million in disclosed funding with investors like – GreyCroft Partners and Future Perfect Ventures.
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The online payment platform benefits importers and exporters across Africa to simplify seamless trading and payment exchange services. Users can send and receive payments in multiple currencies, including African currencies that can be used to pay bills at home and international currencies that can be used to pay suppliers from abroad.
Its core technology involves deploying APIs to work with a network of banks and mobile payment platforms. In some cases, customers who use BitPesa aren’t even aware that the platform uses the bitcoin network – they just pay in one currency and receive in another.
Literarily, BitPesa works like most money transfer services built on bitcoin: they transfer money to the bitcoin blockchain, then transfer it into another currency. This can be done at a cheaper rate than conventional foreign exchange transfer services.
