Anchor, a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) startup, has raised a $2.4 million seed investment round which was led by Goat Capital. The round was joined by FoundersX, Rebel Fund and some existing investors, including Y Combinator and Byld Ventures.
This latest funding comes a year after the company came out of stealth with a $1 million pre-seed and some early customers.
Launched in August 2022 by Segun Adeyemi, Olamide Sobowale and Gbekeloluwa Olufotebi, Anchor is a banking-as-a-service platform for African businesses. The startup provides APIs and infrastructure to build, embed and launch powerful financial products in a secure and scalable.
The startup partners with regulated banking institutions. By doing this, it claims to help businesses shorten the process of building banking products from years to days.
“We are thrilled to have gathered such strong support from investors who share our vision of expanding access to financial choices through BaaS and embedded finance. This has been a significant journey for the Anchor team after our pre-seed raise last year. We have grown tremendously and increased our impact across various clients and customer segments in Africa,” says Segun Adeyemi, CEO and co-founder of Anchor.
Globally, the embedded finance market is expected to reach $384.8 billion by 2029, with a CAGR of 30%. Africa will account for 10% of this market. The continent is projected to reach $40 billion by 2029, with a similar CAGR of 33.2%. Nigeria, Anchor’s home market, has a TAM of at least $7 billion, signalling a massive growth potential for the seed-stage company.
“It’s no news that companies of all kinds are embedding financial products into their offerings, and we have seen this play out over the last few years in Africa. At Anchor, we are going beyond just offering these banking APIs to our customers. But also empowering them with insights into customer behaviours, preferences, and financial trends that will enable them to serve their customers better,” says CEO Adeyemi. “This funding allows us to build out complementary parts of our core BaaS platform, strengthen our compliance infrastructure and offer other value-added services.”
Justin Kan, Partner at Goat Capital said: “The embedded finance market in Africa is nascent but growing fast at over 30% CAGR. Anchor’s growth rate is impressive and showing signs of becoming the category leader which is something we look out for in our portfolio companies. We are excited to partner with Segun and the team to leverage BaaS solutions to create financial prosperity for the continent”.
