Fintech startup, Thepeer, raises $2.1 million in a seed round led by Raba Partnership

Nigerian tech infrastructure startup connecting businesses’ wallets, Thepeer, has raised $2.1 million in a seed round of funding led by Raba Partnership to further pursue its business objectives. Other participants include Rallycap, BYLD, Timon Capital, Musha Ventures, Sunu, and Uncovered Fund as well as leading African fintech Chipper Cash and Stitch.

Taking into consideration $220,000 raised in a pre-seed round from some angel investors including Paystack CTO Ezra Olubi and Edenlife CTO Prosper Otemuyiwa last year, this brings total funding raised to $2.32m.

Launched by Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye and Michael ‘Trojan’ Okoh in August 2021, Thepeer is creating the technology infrastructure for businesses to easily integrate and enable them to support fast, direct and efficient transactions across businesses.

It is estimated that there are almost 600 fintech startups across Africa. Most of these businesses provide digital wallets to their customers but do not have a direct way to use that store of value across different apps and merchants. This is the problem Thepeer is solving.

Today, Thepeer currently offers three main products which helps businesses integrate into their applications or websites for their customers to use:

Direct Charge allows customers of different businesses to fund their wallets from other businesses;

Send allows customers of businesses to send money to each other instantly, and

Checkout allows customers to pay for items online from any store that accepts payment via Thepeer.

Thepeer recently launched another product, Send on the dashboard for businesses to be able to send and receive money from each in seconds, as well as a new currency balance — USD

According to Chike Ononye, customers of businesses such as GetEquity, Nguvuhealth, and more can now fund their accounts from Eversend, and customers of Bitsika, Chipper Cash, Eversend and Paga can shop online from Buyfood-powered restaurants — Blackbell, Sabor Lagos, Suya and Sides, Bernadines, Nifries, Ohuru by HSE, Street13 and HSE Gourmet; as well as Smiley Africa and pay from their wallets during Checkout.

Chike says the company has recorded an average month-on-month transaction growth of 161% since it went live in August 2021 through the first quarter of 2022. One the new product, Send on the dashboard, Thepeer says its monthly transaction volume has grown over 65X and it is processing double-digit millions of dollars.