Eversend, African neobank secures €853,182 in seedrs funding round

By Pavithra R

Eversend, a one-stop financial services hub to exchange, save, manage and send money at the best possible rates, both online and offline has announced that the firm is set to close its SEEDRS round with €853,182 from over 947 investors.

Financial services in Africa are disintegrated, expensive, and inconvenient. The continent’s insurance penetration is less than 3%, 7% has access to credit, and people can pay over 32% for a cross-border money transfer. The root cause of the problem being 66% of African people not having a bank account.

To combat the problem, Eversend offers a digital-only finance platform providing cross-border money transfers, multi-currency wallets, currency exchange and aspirations to provide personal loans, savings, group savings, merchant payments and investments in the future.

The round started with €550,000 investment sought and the firm is planning to use the funding for product development; market expansion: Eversend intends to expand its offering to Francophone Africa, Nigeria, and Europe to make a real connection between Diaspora and Africa; user acquisition; working capital: some of the funds will remain in company accounts as working capital to enhance Eversend’s netting off reserves; and regulatory compliance.

Eversend is available on Android and iOS and is planned to be launched soon on USSD (so users can access without the Internet, anywhere they have a cell phone signal). The company’s monetisation strategy includes:

• Foreign exchange commission, when a user exchanges currencies, performs a cross border money transfer or trades a stock domiciled in foreign currency.
• Commissions from third-party partners and billers who get paid or sell through Eversend like phone credit payments.
• By providing loans, which will generate interest income
• Merchant payments for which charge is as low as 0.5% instead of the 3.9% being charged in Africa to use VISA/Mastercard today.

Founded in 2017, Eversend is a neobank for Africans, anywhere in the world. The company is accelerated by Techstars, Google Launchpad, Nasdaq and Station F. It currently operates through mobile apps in Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana.