While this map has no preplanning in the lobby, it is good to have a plan nonetheless before you break in to such place.
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The investment helps us to be able to go to them and say, ‘hey, we’re a well-funded company, we’ve got customers using us, we’re earning revenue and this is going to be one of the most important companies to come out of Africa.’”īut conclusively, the goal, Mlambo said, is to place the company in a stronger position to raise an attractive Series A within the next few months. “The purpose of this funding is to help us find the best of African talent, people who want to work on big problems. The Zambian company will also use the funds to expand its regional customer base. Union54 plans to use this investment to ramp up recruitment across engineering, product, marketing, and sales teams. It currently has a lean team of 10 located in Nigeria, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia, and Europe. However, he says it’s been challenging to convince people to move to Zambia for work, so Union54 has had to rely on remote work (which is the norm now) for most of its startup life. Mlambo touts Zambia as a solid place to carry out business. For instance, Mlambo claims that Union54, in less than a month of operation, currently transacts more than Zazu’s volume after its first 10 months. Consequently, the task ahead is in multiples, but so is the reward. With Union54, the founders are taking on a pan-African problem, not a Zambian one. “The discussion with Tiger was pretty straightforward they committed pretty quickly and the process was pretty smooth,” the CEO remarked. And Tiger Global wasted no time proving it was the investor Union54 wanted. Mlambo stated that when the company was raising this round, it prioritized speed and looked for a global partner due to the limitations imposed by its primary location in Zambia. In retrospect, though, Mlambo and Martini’s experience as founders of Zazu, where they raised over $2 million as one of Zambia’s most funded startups, cannot be written off as a contributor to Union54’s seeming success. Tiger Global had invested in Nigerian startups Jobberman, Cheki and Wakanow, and South African e-commerce company Takealot this past decade.Ī far cry from Nigeria and South Africa’s bubbling tech ecosystem, Zambia has a relatively quiet startup and venture capital scene therefore, Tiger Global’s participation in Union54’s seed round is a massive win for the southern African nation. Nevertheless, it’s rather interesting that the investment firm is writing its fourth investment in an African fintech startup this year after Flutterwave in March, FairMoney in July and Mono, this month.īut a more impressive fact: Union54 seems to be its first bet outside Nigeria or South Africa, two of Africa’s four most dominant tech ecosystems, including Kenya and Egypt. Tiger Global declined to comment on the investment. Speaking about the investment for Runa Capital, general partner Andre Bliznyuk said the company is excited to support Union54’s efforts to “supercharge the African fintech ecosystem by enabling their customers to easily launch new card-based products and deliver tangible value to the consumers.” “We only make money when they do and that’s why we’re happy to give a guarantee with that interchange. “Not only are we allowing fintechs to go to market faster than any bank or card issuer could ever dream of doing, but we’re also really showing that our incentives are very much aligned,” said Mlambo. That’s where the Zambian startup hopes to create value: to help fintechs earn significant revenue from interchange without doing a lot of the heavy lifting linked with card management.
While that might look minute, imagine a fintech that uses Union54’s API to issue cards to more than 20,000 customers who use it frequently. When the employee uses the card to pay for stuff online, perhaps a Netflix subscription or AWS invoice of $30, the fintech earns 1% of that transaction, in this case, $0.30. Now, we do and we are the only company in Africa to would give you the interchange.”Įssentially, here’s how the interchange works - Union54 onboards a fintech company and it uses Union54’s API to issue a single card to an employee. But we didn’t have a firm idea of how we would do that. So what else has changed since the company spoke to TechCrunch in August? “We’ve realized that there’s such a huge potential for companies who want to monetize their existing customer bases. The first Zambian startup to get into YC is developing Africa’s first card-issuing API