Ghana’s fintech Fido raises $ 30 million to roll out new products and expand across Africa – TechCrunch

After giving credit to thousands of customers over mobile phones since 2015, the Ghana-based fintech Fido is now looking for further growth opportunities for its expansion across Africa.

Fido told TechCrunch that it plans to add savings and payment products to its portfolio later this year, and to enter Uganda, the second market, as it prepares to expand to more regions across the continent. Fintech is also set to open its second research and development center in Ghana’s capital, Accra, which will strengthen its Israel branch to help it automate most of its operations to ensure long-term sustainability.

The aforementioned plans come on the back of a $ 30 million equity investment and some undisclosed debt financing that the startup has just brought into a Series A round led by Israel-based private equity fund Fortissimo Capital, with the participation of Yard Ventures; a VC fund of Harvard alumni. This brings the total equity investment raised to date to $ 38 million.

“What we see in the market today is a segment of customers, who are mostly small entrepreneurs, who do not really have access to traditional banking systems … and we see an opportunity to offer these customers, who are outside banking systems, savings products which are completely digital and very easy to use, said Fido CEO Alon Eitan to TechCrunch.

“Customers will be able to deposit money from mobile, cards and even cash, and we get an attractive return on this savings. Our payment product will be placed on top of existing payment rails, since we want to create interoperability between all the different payment rails that appear in different countries today, Eitan said.

Founded by Nadav Topolski, Tomer Edry and Nir Zepkowitz, Fido provides mobile loans of up to $ 250 to individuals and small businesses. The loans can be repaid through single or multiple installments for a period of up to six months.

Eitan told TechCrunch that it is easy for customers to set up a Fido account, since the digital registration is only about 10 minutes long.

For registration, customers must upload head images and copies of their identity cards, which are then validated by Fido’s image recognition model and checked against existing databases. Eitan said this multi-step verification prevents fraud.

He added that fintech relies on credit scoring technologies to determine the amount it can lend to borrowers.

“We have been able to solve standard rates with very smart machine learning models. And I can modestly say that our results are unparalleled on the continent. We have low single – digit default rates, which I think are unheard of in our area. And we are able to “We are doing this because we are relentlessly focused on delivering new machine learning models in space. We are currently operating more than three risk-only models and we will soon launch a fourth. We also have fraud models as well,” he said.

Eitan noted that fintech has so far taken out 1.5 million loans, valued at $ 150 million, to 340,000 customers in Ghana. This amount is set to grow as it enters other markets in Africa, starting with Uganda.

“Uganda is similar to Ghana in many ways, and we understand the regulations very well. We think it is a very large market, both in terms of population size, but also in terms of the penetration of mobile. So, there are about nine million mobile accounts in Uganda, so it’s very important for us to go to a market that is already mature because it helps us deliver our services immediately, and that’s what we really want to do, “he said. he.

Fido is supported by a team of 65 employees that includes digital debt collectors, which Eitan says uses ethical approaches to follow up on late repayments.

Fortissimo Capital partner Yochai Hacohen said in a statement: “We are really impressed [Fido’s] ability to sign people immediately while delivering sustainable finances. This sets them apart from the other players in the room. “

“Fido brings a genuinely differentiated offering that solves a huge challenge by using disruptive technologies. Now world-class fintech technology is available to everyone, for mutual growth and shared prosperity.”