Over the last two years, Africa has become the world's third fastest-growingcryptocurrencies market. As citizens try to hedge against currency depreciation and build wealth, countries such as Nigeria and South Africa are majorly responsible for skyrocketing adoption rates.
The countries that house most of the continent'sCrypto andBlockchain startup are located in Africa. One such company, Bitmama, has raised a pre-seed extension of $1.65 million, adding to the $350,000 it received last October, thus, closing the round at $2 million.
The investment in Bitmama was led by two firms. Other investors include existing and new investors such as Adaverse, Enrich Africa, GreenHouse Capital, ODBA, Five35 Venture, and angel investors, among others.
The U.S. and Nigeria-based company, which has built a distributed remote team across Nigeria, says it's working to democratize Africa's highly fragmented payment system by using the internet of things.
The chief executive officer of the startup is from Africa. Adam Umar is the company's chief technology officer. According to the executives, Bitmama started as a group on the messaging service. Users were able to access virtual assets formally and explore other use cases, such as buying, selling and swapping. The company introduced Changera, a social payment solution that allows customers to use stable coins to pay for things on websites like Amazon.
Bitmama was started to make it easy to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in Africa. As time went on, we saw a few use cases that could be solved with this technology. Many people wanted to make transactions aside from buying and selling ofcryptocurrencies, so we built stuff that would allow them to buy local and international airtime and data. Due to local bank card limitations, we provided virtual dollar cards for Nigerian's to use in international purchases.
The CEO is Ruth I Selema.
The company says its Changera virtual coins can work anywhere in the world for online transactions, with spending limits of over $10,000 a month. According to the CEO, Bitmama launched Changera at the intersection of blockchain payments and lifestyle, mainly targeting non-crypto-savvy people who are more comfortable using platforms with basicUI interface and lesscrypto jargon to communicate.
Bitmama had less than 20,000 users earlier this year. The number of people using Bitmama exchange and Changera has grown to more than 70k. Users perform transactions on the platform, which results in revenues.
African startups raised $91 million in the first quarter of 2022, which is more than the $127 million they received from investors over the course of the year. Exchanges and remittance platforms remain the most backed in the space, despite the fact that new upstarts such as MARA and Jambo have grabbed the headlines. Buy coins and Busha are YC-backed.
MARA raises $23M from Coinbase Ventures and FTX to build Africa’s portal to the crypto economy
The new investment will allow Bitmama to be more tenacious on that front, even though it isn't among the continent's most fundedBlockchain platforms.
Bitmama is very innovative and that's one of the things that makes it so strong. She said that they have been doing a lot of things where they were the first. For example, we were the first to offer offline KYC. We were the first to launch the coins. We have two innovative products that will be the first in the market and we want to keep that going.
Bitmama is working on a business to business (B2B) play where it can assist businesses in various industries that want to offer services without building from the ground up. Bitmama is testing this feature with some of its clients.
The company will use the pre-seed to expand its operational presence, strengthen its team, consolidate its product offerings and plot market across Africa while rapidly scaling new use cases forcryptocurrencies within the continent.
Launching Africa's partnership with Bitmama is a way to allow Africans to trade and manage Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets conveniently and universally. We value this in our fund and what Bitmama delivers.
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