Standard Bank and Nomanini sign 12-months in the making $4m deal
South-African based fintech platform, Nomanini and Standard Bank announced a $4 million funding round led by Standard Bank and completed by Goodwell Investments, an Amsterdam-based investment firm focused on fintech and financial inclusion.
The bank told FinTech Futures that the deal has been in the works for 12-months as a strategic investment and commercial partnership. Larry McCarthy, head of strategic investments and alliances at Standard Bank Group headed up the investment side, while Adrian Vermooten, head of digital in African regions, championed the commercial agreements and projects.
Nomanini started fundraising two years ago. “We did not specifically set out for strategic investment, but the opportunity to work with Standard Bank was too compelling for us to pass up,” says a Nomanini spokesperson.
“We’ve been taking our time over the last two years to find the right investor for our next phase of growth. Enabling this, we have had the benefit of having a very supportive and aligned investor in Goodwell. Goodwell was pivotal in the process and was keen as we were to find the right co-investor,” the spokesperson adds.
The fintech will use the investment to further enhance its platform that links mobile and financial services with the trade in physical goods, in addition to growing its capacity to deliver fresher implementations, faster. This takes the form of a larger commercial operations function, and/or expanding its DevOps and product teams.
The bank believes that the Nomanini platform’s customisable capabilities for the many heterogeneous markets that operate in and across Africa, will help them access a huge amount of valuable data which will build a profile of the trader.
With the benefit of Nomanini’s business analytics, the bank will be able to offer a mobile application which provides access to new lines of business, credit and savings services for millions of informal merchants across 14 African countries – all without having to set foot in a bank branch or leave their points of sale. The service will be available in South Africa, Zambia, Mozambique, Uganda, Malawi, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania eSwatini, Lesotho and Botswana.
This round of funding will cover Nomanini’s growth with Standard Bank and its expansion across Southern and East Africa, “but, we’ll be looking to raise more to grow even further,” says the Nomanini spokesperson.
The size of the underserved and cash-based informal retail trade is enormous and the gaps measured in trillions of dollars.
