Kenyan fintech startup, Credrails secures seed funding to revolutionize financial infrastructure in Africa
Kenyan financial infrastructure startup Credrails will close a deal worth $2.5 million in a seed funding round to connect Africa to its API.
The seed funding round was led by Softbank Group Corp. and participated in Unicorn Growth Capital, Precursor Ventures, and Samos Investments.
Credrails delivers the infrastructure to connect banks, mobile money, and offline into an API. Thus, ensuring that customers have the required resources to power their customized, innovative fintech solutions, such as lending analytics, KYC, and KYB.
Credrails use technology to collect financial data from different online and offline sources, then provide unified data to businesses via the API. As a result, businesses can make informed decisions with deep analytics, unlock new revenue streams, and increase market share. In addition, the single API connects to every country on the continent, allowing developers to build for Africa swiftly and efficiently.
Launched in 2020 by Clara Odero and Teresia Kairu, the startup is headquartered in Nairobi and has physical operations in Nigeria, with access to 250 million accounts across 33 countries. Some of Credrails’ customers include LipaLater, Shara, and Access bank. Credrails would further its expansion goal to connect Africa with seed funding.
The co-founder and CEO of Credrails, Clara Odero, has gathered experience building infrastructure in her career. She has worked with companies that have become valued as unicorns. Before starting Credrail, she worked with Flutterwave, building payment infrastructure that allows Africans to send and receive money in their local currencies. Moving the primary Nigerian business to the rest of Africa and adding alternative payment options.
She has also worked at Rapyd, connecting 37 countries to the global payment network by building a network where global companies cab scale originally by accepting locally preferred payment methods. In addition, Odero’s experience working with renewable energy policy and expanding payment companies throughout Africa and the Middle East effectively revolutionizes the pan-African digital revolution.
Since its launch, Credrails boasts of a 400% month-on-month growth. It plans to be active in five markets by the end of the year.
Teresia Kairu is the co-founder and COO of Credrail. Kairu has over 12 years of experience in finance and operations, with special expertise in financial reporting, transfer pricing, and scaling teams.
SoftBank Group has a track record of anticipating major life-shaping technological progress. Leading the funding round, the funding was through its Softbank Vision Fund Emerge Program, which aims to promote diversity in tech by partnering with underrepresented founders with capital, tools, and networks needed to grow and scale their businesses.