TeamApt secures funding from QED Investors to widen credit offerings
TeamApt has just completed a financing round and brought onboard one of the world’s largest fintech specialists, QED Investors. With almost $5 billion assets under management, QED is a premier VC in the fintech space. They have invested in 27 unicorns over more than 180 portfolio companies across 14 countries. TeamApt is its first investment in Africa.
TeamApt operates Nigeria’s largest business payments and banking platform, with more than 400,000 businesses onboarded and processing $100 billion annualized run-rate transaction value.
Its all-in-one business solution aims to digitize Africa’s economy and is laying the foundation that will provide Nigeria’s 41 million SMBs with digital payments acceptance channels, access to working capital and business expansion loans, and business management tools such as expense management (business payments cards), accounting and book-keeping solutions to manage its operations. The business has grown by more than 300% annually since launching in 2015 and is now targeting its first wave of international expansion in Africa in the coming months.
“With this financing round, TeamApt is widening our credit offerings,” said TeamApt CEO Tosin Eniolorunda. “QED’s investment proves TeamApt’s opportunity for exponential growth as a world-class financial institution at the forefront of Africa’s economic revolution.”
“As core fintech operators, QED is bringing the fintech expertise we need to scale in Nigeria and as we plan to expand our offering across Africa. With QED’s operator expertise and TeamApt’s excellent management team, TeamApt will continue digitising Africa’s economy, enabling growth, inclusion and access to financial services.”
In September 2021, QED announced it had closed a substantially oversubscribed $1.05 billion fund, including $550 million in QED Fund VII for early-stage investments and $500 million in a new Growth Fund. QED first announced it was entering Africa in February 2022, hiring Gbenga Ajayi and Chidinma Iwueke to lead its investments on the continent.
“I am proud to bring Africa to QED and QED to Africa,” said QED Investors Partner and Head of Africa Gbenga Ajayi. “I could not think of a better way to enter the continent than with our investment in TeamApt. Tosin and his team have steadily built an impressive payment and distribution network across Nigeria over the past five years. Their strong and positive unit economics, coupled with a deep customer focus, will enable them to continue to build out an even more expansive network.”
“Enabling a growing digital form of payments for merchants and consumers in Nigeria is exciting, but being able to deepen the financial capability of these merchants, providing them with the everyday tools and credit they need to run their businesses, will be profoundly impactful.”
Nigeria is home to one of Africa’s largest, entrepreneur-led economies with ~40% of the population owning their own business. The country is at the forefront of the widescale adoption of digital payments across the continent with over $800 billion in digital transactions annualized for the first four months of 2022.
FT Partners served as a financial and strategic advisor to TeamApt in the financing round, highlighting FT Partners’ track record in the payments space across emerging markets.
