More than 95% are small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria. Despite their importance and size, many of these businesses are not served by financial institutions. They lack the complete range of financial services they need to scale up their operations.
Small and medium-sized businesses need other resources to understand their financial operations.
Brass, a Nigerian fintech that provides banking services to small and mid-sized businesses, is solving these problems. To expand its services to local traders, entrepreneurs and other fast-growing companies, the company secured $1.7 million in funding.
Brass was founded by Sola Akindolu, Emmanuel Okeke in July 2020. Brass was founded by Sola Akindolu and Emmanuel Okeke in July 2020. CTO Okeke was the engineering manager at Stripe subsidiary Paystack.
Kudi's Akindolus work opened his eyes to the challenges small and medium-sized businesses face in Nigeria. He said that he discovered how difficult it was for these businesses have seamless financial operations. Cash-flow support services are essential to track vendor payments, money movements and overall business health.
Why start Brass when there are already products available for entrepreneurs and SMEs in Nigeria? Sparkle offers both personal and business banking services, with a higher priority for the latter. Kuda and Carbon, both consumer neobanks, are at different stages of offering business features for SMEs. Prospa, a YC-backed firm that does not like to be called a neobank but provides software and banking services for microbusinesses as well as freelancers.
Akindolu believes these products are good entry points for the SME market but do not meet all the banking needs of Brass businesses.
There are many ways that money can be taken out of a business. Akindolu described Brass application as a way to help businesses improve their cash flow. That's basically what we do with Brass right now: financial operations and cashflow support.
Brass offers a range of payment and product services including payroll and expense management, API support and cash-flow analytics. Other core services include team and contact management and POS, debit, and credit card management.
Brass Capital is the most prominent feature of all. This space is already heating up alongside other platforms like Float which offers working capital and services for businesses. Brass Capital has performed well in a short time. The cash-flow financing company claims to have disbursed over $2 million in credit, after being used by two dozen Brass customers for six months in private beta.
TechCrunch was informed by Akindolu that the company will soon make the service public.
Brass claims that the platform is used by many clients as their default money-operations service provider. According to the CEO, the fintech earns its money by providing credit and API call services on its regular product offerings.
It serves over 5,000 customers, ranging from restaurants and banks to schools and malls. Brass, unlike other platforms is working to optimize its platform for different business levels with varying needs.
We have set out to create a network of financial operations services. For micro businesses, we may be too much. They might not find us useful. We are more concerned with small and medium-sized companies.
Kola Aina, founder and general partner of Ventures Platform, said that the company was funded by Ventures Platform because it had the mission to make banking accessible to small businesses.
Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga GB Agboola and Paystack cofounder Ezra Olubi are among other investors.
Fola Olatunji–David, Leonard Stiegler, and Olumide Soyombo at Voltron Capital were some of the previous backers.
Elizabeth Yin (general partner at Hustle Fund) stated that Sola and her Brass team are excited to be supported. They provide critical financial technology for African businesses starting with Nigeria's 41.5 million.
Access to banking services is not a problem only in Nigeria. Even though they employ over 80%, the continent's SME sector has a gap in financing of more than $136 billion annually.
Akindolu stated that Brass would use part the financing to expand its business into South Africa and Kenya by next year. The former has been incorporated in the latter. Flutterwave is part of the company's expansion plans in Africa, according to a one-year old statement. Brass plans to diversify its customer base through the launch of more product categories, particularly around credit in its markets.
