As Africa’s tech ecosystem booms, extra native expertise is touchdown distant jobs with Massive Tech corporations and international startups. However getting paid stays a problem for a lot of of those freelancers and distant employees. They battle to open accounts that settle for US {dollars}, with overseas employers utilizing incompatible fee platforms, and face sluggish invoicing and fee processes.
Enter Raenest, one of many many native fintechs that has stepped in to repair this. The corporate simply raised $11 million in Collection A funding, led by QED Buyers, to develop its attain throughout Africa.
By way of its retail product, Geegpay, launched in early 2022, Raenest presents freelancers digital USD, GBP, and EUR accounts. These accounts assist them obtain funds, handle multi-currency wallets, and convert currencies. Raenest additionally gives digital and bodily debit playing cards that settle for a number of currencies like U.S. {dollars}.
Final March, the Lagos-based Raenest expanded past freelancers with Raenest for Business, a platform that gives the identical monetary companies to African companies, permitting them to ship and obtain worldwide funds.
Progress past freelancers
Curiously, Raenest didn’t begin with freelancers in thoughts. Victor Alade, together with co-founders Sodruldeen Mustapha and Richard Oyome, launched the corporate in 2022 as an Employer of Report (EOR)— aiding overseas firms to pay African staff compliantly.
Nevertheless, a few months in, the founders realized the true downside wasn’t with firms sending funds, it was with people struggling to obtain them.
“A U.S. company might not care if a payment is delayed by five days. But for someone in Nigeria or Kenya, that’s a big deal—especially when converting to local currency becomes another hurdle,” CEO Alade, a former software program engineer at Jumia and Andela, advised TechCrunch.
Additionally drawing from his distant work expertise, Alade and his co-founders, who additionally deliver expertise working with African fintechs like LemFi and FairMoney, pivoted Raenest’s focus to addressing this ache level.
Geegpay rapidly gained traction amongst freelancers, however enterprise signups started to rise as effectively. The crew realized that African firms additionally wanted overseas accounts to streamline cross-border transactions. “Businesses started asking if they could get fixed bank accounts to simplify payments,” Alade added. “That’s when we started thinking: How big is this opportunity? Who else is building for Africa?”
The addition of enterprise banking couldn’t have come at a greater time. Across the identical interval, U.S.-based fintech Mercury began limiting enterprise accounts from a number of nations, together with components of Africa. This created a spot out there, giving native fintechs like Raenest a possibility to serve enterprise clients.
In the meantime, the EOR house was fairly aggressive with main gamers like Deel beginning to look into the continent extra carefully.
These occasions made Raenest lean into what it noticed as a greater alternative: providing African companies a approach to obtain and ship worldwide funds.
Scaling to serve people and companies
That guess is paying off. Since launching in 2022, Raenest has processed over $1 billion in fee quantity — a 160% progress between 2023 and 2024 — serving freelancers and companies throughout the continent. As we speak, greater than 700,000 people use the platform to obtain funds from international platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Gusto. Additionally they use it for on-line purchasing and subscriptions.
Alternatively, over 300 companies depend on Raenest to gather funds from worldwide clients, elevate capital from traders, and make cross-border funds. Its shopper record contains African startups like Moniepoint, Helium Health, Fez Supply, and Matta.
Raenest competes with a number of fintech startups providing multicurrency accounts to clients in Africa, together with Afriex, Cleva, Gray, Verto, and Leatherback. Alade argues that Raenest has an edge as a result of it targets people and companies, not like most gamers that cater completely to at least one buyer kind. Past its twin strategy, Raenest prioritizes pace, safety, reliability, and compliance to retain customers, Alade stated.
Raenest’s ambitions prolong past cross-border funds. “We want to create a safe and seamless financial ecosystem for Africans — helping them earn, invest, and grow their wealth, no matter where they are in the world,” Alade stated, hinting at upcoming product launches.
Growth plans
At the moment, the three-year-old fintech operates in Nigeria beneath a cash switch license. As a part of its subsequent progress part, the corporate will look to deepen its presence in Nigeria whereas securing licenses for growth into Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and the U.S. This transfer will permit Raenest to serve Africans on the continent and within the diaspora.
With banking partnerships within the U.S. and U.Okay., Raenest can be working to safe extra in these areas because it scales. Alongside the best way, the corporate goals to draw prime expertise to help its growth even because it brings Geegpay and Raenest for Business beneath a single model, Raenest.
The newest $11 million Collection A spherical brings Raenest’s complete funding to $14.3 million.
Lead investor QED, one of many world’s prime fintech VC corporations, has been steadily growing its footprint in Africa since 2022. It has backed 5 startups offering monetary companies on the continent: Moniepoint, Remedial Health, Precium, Cedar Cash, and now Raenest.
“We firmly believe that by bridging the gap between local and global markets, Raenest will unlock new opportunities for African entrepreneurs, freelancers and businesses, ultimately driving greater economic empowerment across the continent,” stated Gbenga Ajayi, associate and head of Africa and the Center East at QED Buyers.
Different traders within the spherical embody pan-African early-to-growth-stage VC corporations, similar to Norrsken22, Ventures Platform, P1 Ventures, and Seedstars.
