Nigeria-based fintech API firm, OnePipe, has reportedly raised a seed round of more than $3.5 million to strengthen its commitment towards its embedded finance offering.
The round was co-led by V&R Associates, Tribe Capital, and VC Atlantica Ventures, which was also a co-lead investor in the company’s $950,000 pre-seed round that was held the previous year. Other participants of the round comprise new investors including Norrsken, Saison Capital, Canaan Partners, The Fund, and Two Culture Cap.
Alongside some angel investors, existing investors including Acquity, DFS Lab, Ingressive Capital, Techstars, and Chris Adelsbach also followed on with new checks.
Back in 2020, numerous fintech API infrastructure participants entered the African market, bringing in Plaid-like services to developers and businesses. This year, the companies captured the attention of venture capitalists with each prominent player securing large seed to Series A rounds.
Having entered into collaborations with a few banks, OnePipe took a decision for stepping back and delving into the sector of embedded finance. While a company providing open banking and data aggregation services needs to partner with almost every bank in the country of its operation, it is not necessarily the case with firms providing embedded finance services. Therefore, OnePipe has partnered with six banks at present.
As per reliable sources, the company’s original game plan was the creation of an API gateway that was centered on connecting fintechs and banks under a uniform standard. The move would enable the company in performing core open banking.
However, according to Ope Adeoye, OnePipe Founder and CEO, upon continuously integration with such financial institutions, the company became clear that it needed to pivot since it was not generating a lot of demand cycles.
For the uninitiated, there are usually three chief fintech API infrastructure plays. The first is focused on financial and data accounts aggregation.
The second one includes embedded finance and banking, which comprises companies such as Marqeta and Treasury Prime. The third one is the core open banking sector that is pioneered by companies such as TrueLayer.
Source credit: https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/23/nigerias-onepipe-raises-3-5m-to-double-down-on-its-embedded-finance-offering/