Jumo, a South Africa-based financial services provider for businesses in emerging markets, collected $120m in funding yesterday from investors including payment services firm Visa.
The round was led by investment and financial services group Fidelity and also backed by investment firm Kingsway Capital. According to The Times, it gave the company a valuation of about $400m.
Founded in 2015, Jumo runs an online platform which partners banks to provide financial services for small businesses in emerging markets across Africa and Asia.
The platform has been used to make 120 million loans totalling $3.5bn to more than 18 million people and small businesses across Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Côte d’Ivoire and Pakistan.
The company will use the funding to support the scaling of its platform capacity and broaden its offering by increasing the number of financial products available to small and medium-sized enterprises and providing longer-term lending options for merchants and larger businesses.
The financing will also accelerate Jumo’s international expansion in new markets such as Nigeria and Cameroon. It brought the overall funding raised by the company to about $200m, it said, $55m coming from investment bank Goldman Sachs, Odey Asset Management and Leapfrog Investments in February 2020.
Vostok Emerging Finance had invested $4m in Jumo in October 2015 and added $6m two months later. Proparco provided a further $3m for the company in 2018.