JUMO, a mobile financial services platform for mobile network operators and banks in South Africa has closed a new $12.5 million investment. The funding round was led by Odey Asset Management, it was also announced that James Hanbury— a partner at the company will join the Board of JUMO.
The investment compliments JUMO’s recent $52 million equity investment round in September, a round led by Goldman Sachs, Proparco, Finnfund, Vostok Emerging Finance, Gemcorp Capital and LeapFrog Investments as participants. It brings JUMO’s total funds raising to US$103M.
The company till date, has branches in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Zambia, Pakistan, United Kingdom, Singapore and South Africa. The grant will be used to further develop JUMO’s technology platform, support market expansion and deepen data capabilities – specifically in applied ML and AI innovation to accelerate financial inclusion, across its major markets.
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Launched in 2014 by Andrew Watkins-Ball, over 10 million people have used the platform either for saving or borrowing with nearly 70% of these being micro and small business owners across Africa and Asia.
In addition, it has processed over $1 billion in loans and maintained savings growth of over 50% month-on-month, and this manages over 45 million customer interactions per month.
Meanwhile, CB Insights, a tech market intelligence platform in October published its second annual Fintech 250 and listed JUMO with some other African fintech companies – Stripe, TransferWise, CoinBase, GoFundMe and WorldRemit – as the most promising financial technology companies globally.
In Africa, the Financial Technology sector has challenged the culture of money use and financial activities in Africa recently. Citi Research gave credit to this statement, as it posited that over 70 percent Kenyan adults used mobile money in 2017, this ranks the country as one of the world’s foremost mobile money penetration nation, while Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana jack up the trend with more than 40 to 50 percent mobile money users.
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