YEP! – a Lagos and San Francisco based super-app has secured the sum of $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to improve financial inclusion, economic opportunities, and remittances in Africa.
The company also said that it is launching its revolutionary new digital financial super app on iOS and Android in five African countries; Nigeria, Niger, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.
Similarly, it said it plans to increase the super-app’s debt facility to $10 million by the end of this year as the company scales its lending operations to achieve a growth plan of doubling an existing network of about 100,000 merchants to over 200,000 by the close of 2022.
Leading the round was Greenhouse Capital, which has added the firm to its portfolio of pioneering companies in Africa including Y.C. companies Flutterwave, Credpal, and Helium health.
YEP! is a digital financial services company leveraging technology to deliver unconventional and intuitive financial services and solutions that fills the gap left by existing banking models which fail to serve Africa’s unbanked, underserved and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
The company was founded by Olaoluwa Awojoodu, Airende Ojeomogha, and Garry Ottosen with a view to improving growth capital, deepen customer penetration in Africa, and progress expansion plans as well as U.S. market entry in a bid to bank the African diaspora.
Olaoluwa Awojoodu, YEP! co-Founder said the newly secured credit facility will enable the startup kickstart the provision of working capital loans to existing merchants as it expands across the continent.
Awojoodu said, “As we strive to deliver on our promise of bringing financial access to all Africans and Connecting Africans to the world, increasing Yep!’s lending capacity will be a key catalyst in pulling more customers and merchants into its ecosystem”.
“Access to finance can be transformative – it unlocks opportunities among those that need it the most and has a huge impact on the wider economy”, he added.
According to Garry Ottosen, Co-founder, Yep!, “We want to create a disruptive financial platform that democratises access to financial services and economic opportunities for both retail and business customers across Africa. Yep! Succeeds only when our customers do.”
Ruby Nimkar, Partner at Greenhouse Capital stated, “We are excited to support Olaoluwa, Airende and Garry as they make financial services accessible to consumers and businesses both on the continent, as well as in the diaspora. The founders are seasoned operators and we were impressed by the vision, the team and the speed of execution.”
