Sudo Africa – a Nigerian fintech startup that was founded in 2020 as a card issuing API fintech has raised the sum of $3.7 million in a pre-seed funding round for its card issuing platform.
The company which has the infrastructure to allow either a developer or merchant regulate and program the cards they’ve been issued to suit their function has said that the funding would be used to expand the company outside Lagos to other African market.
The round which was led by a San Francisco based venture capitalist firm, Global Founders Capital had participations from other firms which include Picus Capital, LoftyInc Capital, Rallycap Ventures, Kepple Africa, Berrywood Capital, ZedCrest and Suya Ventures.
Some African fintech founders such as Olugbenga Agboola CEO of Flutterwave, Ham Serunjogi, CEO of Chipper Cash, and Odunayo Eweniyi, Co-founder of PiggyVest invested during the funding round.
Founded in 2020 by Aminu Bakori and Kabir Shittu, Sudo Africa boosts of a timely disbursement of its card issuance.
Furthermore, after one is issued a Sudo card and before use, an API is in place which gives decision to whether or not a transaction can be approved or denied.
Speaking on reasons for the startup was to provide a solution to the past problems they faced while attempting to issue cards at their previous startup: a mobile wallet system allowed users to aggregate existing financial institutions into a single platform and perform transactions.
“At some point, we wanted to issue cards and worked with one of the local banks in Nigeria”, Aminu Bakori said.
“They got to print up to 1,000 cards, but it took a lot of time and none of them functioned because the bank wasn’t able to provide any APIs for us to either manage the cards or even control the usage of those cards. That was the first time we came around, thinking about how to issue cards”, Bakori added.
The Kaduna-based startup, just like other API-led card-issuing fintechs is increasingly getting attention from investors who think it’s the next big thing in a sector that has attracted the most VC dollars in Africa. In this regard, co-founder and COO of Sudo Africa, Kabir Shittu said, “Our concern right now is to expand into other African countries. So we’re looking at before the end of this year, we’ll probably be in three or four more African countries”.
