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Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation

TechCrunch

and Senegal-based mobile money provider, has raised $200 million in Series A round of funding. The mobile money market in sub-Saharan Africa is growing exponentially. This past year, up to $500 billion has moved through the accounts of 300 million active mobile money users in the region. Wave , a U.S.

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Wave, a Stripe-backed African fintech valued at $1.7 billion, cut 15% of its staff in June

TechCrunch

Wave, an African fintech that offers mobile money services in Senegal and Ivory Coast, laid off about 15% of its workforce last month. Thus, the layoffs affected almost 300 employees, most of whom worked in Wave’s new markets: Burkina Faso, Mali and Uganda. The firm, run by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk, was valued at $1.7

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Smile Identity expands African footprint with acquisition of Appruve to strengthen ID verification services

TechCrunch

As fintech services proliferate across different African markets, the need to have sufficient KYC and identity verification processes in place has intensified amid increasing fraud challenges and more stringent regulatory requirements. We want to add that depth in more markets, and Appruve gives some of that.”

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Taptap Send raises $65M to build cross-border remittances focused on the most underserved markets

TechCrunch

Taptap Send believes that its unique place in the market is that it has built not just the easiest, but the most reliable system to initiate, manage and receive those transfers. Taptap Send has been steadily growing and adding more countries to its list of served markets.

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PawaPay raises $9M seed backed by MSA, 88mph and Mr Eazi’s Zagadat Capital

TechCrunch

When companies create digital payments-facing solutions for African countries outside Nigeria and South Africa, building around mobile money is key. Today, the company is announcing that it has closed $9 million in seed funding to scale its operational presence, recruit talent and expand into new markets.

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Sokowatch rebrands to Wasoko as it raises $125M Series B from Tiger Global and Avenir

TechCrunch

“In managing the operations directly ourselves … we went from an asset-light backend distribution software platform to this market-facing platform that was out there delivering goods directly to shops themselves.”. And what started in Kenya soon scaled into neighboring East African markets Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda in 2018.

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Daily Crunch: Proton releases end-to-end encrypted password manager for desktop and mobile

TechCrunch

From hospitality to fleet management : Two brothers in Senegal are putting their hospitality management skills to work helping trucking companies with their logistics. For example, raising funds to scale up sales and marketing efforts might sound great, but what if the business itself has negative unit economics? Catherine has more.