Anchor is a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that makes it easy to build financial products in Africa. With the recent launch of its public beta API infrastructure in Nigeria, its first market has made it easier for African businesses to build, embed, and launch financial products.
The startup was accepted into the Y Combinator Summer 2022 Batch as the first African BaaS and embedded finance platform. It has also received over $1 million in pre-seed funding from Byld Ventures, Y Combinator, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and several angel investors, such as Emmanuel Okeleji (CEO of SeamlessHR), Ado Oseragbaje, Yinka Odeleye, and Sanmi.
The company will use the money to get more clients, improve its IT infrastructure, hire top employees, and put money into its compliance and regulatory infrastructure, growing more than 200% MoM. The firm already has over 40 other startups on its waitlist.
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Ashutosh Desai, a partner at Y Combinator, asserts that Anchor’s embedded finance platform “enables technology businesses in Africa to design solutions that can swiftly extend access and enhance the quality of financial services.” We’re excited to help Segun, Olamide, and Gbeke, a team with a lot of skill and knowledge, build the financial infrastructure Africa needs for its economy to grow.
“I believe BaaS will play a prominent role in Africa’s financial services distribution.” As a full-stack BaaS provider, Anchor separates customer engagement from infrastructure, allowing its customers to focus on differentiation rather than a commodity. Infrastructure. “We are excited to work with this determined and experienced team,” said Founder of Byld Ventures, Youcef Oudjidane.
The founders’ expertise from creating and working with fintechs throughout Africa inculcates the idea for Anchor. Segun Adeyemi, the CEO, founded Amplifypay, a payments company that he sold to Carbon (also known as OneFi or Paylater) in 2019. Segun then worked with JUMO, a company that helps major mobile money providers in Africa set up credit infrastructure.
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Olamide is the CTO and co-founder of the company. He has worked at AppZone, TeamApt, Kuda, and Carbon. He worked as a full-stack engineer at TeamApt and was part of the group that created Nigeria’s first virtual payment system. Gbeke, the Engineering Lead and a co-founder, was an IT consultant and business owner in Nigeria for more than ten years before he joined Booking.com, where he made software for financial operations. It lets businesses offer specialized banking products to their retail and business customers.
About Anchor
Anchor provides banking services operated by developers. With just a few lines of code, webhooks, and SDKs, you can give your customers new financial features, such as making deposits, saving money, and opening virtual accounts. Consumers or business partners can come onboard and register themselves seamlessly via any method.