Ivorian fintech Julaya gets $5M to become banking partner for businesses in Fran...
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Ivorian fintech Julaya gets $5M to become banking partner for businesses in Francophone Africa
Ivorian payments-led fintech startup Julaya has extended its pre-Series A round by $5 million. The company, which facilitates B2B payments for businesses in Francophone West Africa, mainly via mobile money channels, has raised a total of $7 million in the financing round.
In 2019, West Africa reported the most live mobile money services in any region, with 56 million active accounts. In Ivory Coast, one of Francophone Africa’s largest mobile money markets, 75% of the population own a mobile money account, compared to 20% who hold bank accounts. It’s why Julaya launched its services in the west African country and has since expanded into Senegal, where mobile market penetration is around 80% as well as other countries in the UEMOA (West African Economic and Monetary Union) region, which also have prevalent mobile money usage.
Small to large enterprises in these countries can use the Julaya platform to make bulk payments to other businesses and their unbanked employees through existing mobile money channels. But they can now access more services, for example, the startup’s prepaid card — issued by Mastercard — for corporate expense management. The cards are tailored for businesses’ travel needs, other online expenses and easy import of transactions into their accounting systems, CEO Mathias Léopoldie told TechCrunch in an interview.
“Our sense or strategy with the cards is to provide a full range of service. Because if you have just cards, I don’t think you could build a great startup with a lot traction as you would like, for example, in the U.S.,” said the chief executive, who founded the company with Charles Talbot. “The card payment industry, except for South Africa, maybe Nigeria and a little bit in Egypt, is a developing one and while you might be able to grow a business on that, it’s almost impossible in our region [Francophone Africa].”
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