Tanda, a Kenya based fintech startup has announced that it secured funding from African tech investor HAVAÍC, Zedcrest Capital, DFS Lab and four other investors, to enable the regional expansion of its operations.
As statement issued by the tech startup states that the expansion comes on the back of successfully pioneering and proving the viability of the interoperable agent and merchant model in Kenya, a model that has only been validated in West Africa prior to Tanda.
In addition to the funding, Tanda has also secured key strategic partnerships with Mastercard and Interswitch which will further accelerate its growth.
“Tanda is solving one part of the very deep and complex problem of financial inclusion that is not only Kenyan, but a problem across all emerging and undeveloped markets,” commented Rob Heath, Partner at HAVAÍC, on why the decided to fund Tanda.
“HAVAÍC believe that the wider Tanda team have the right mix of skills, technical expertise, geographic market knowledge and real-world experience to understand the challenges facing those left behind in the financial ecosystem,” he added.
Tanda’s platform and network now supports 58 banks and saccos, four telecoms, 18 billers, 12,000 merchants and agents and has served over 300,000 unique customers, all of which have processed millions of transactions to date.
Geoffrey Mulei, CEO of Tanda also weighed in saying, “Our team will continue to run aggressive agent and customer acquisition drives across the region, while securing more strategic partnerships in these new markets to further support Tanda’s growth and strategy as we pursue our goal of digitising payments across Africa.”
Tanda has now set its sights on growing its Kenyan footprint to 100,000 agents and merchants and an expansion to Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda within the next 24 months.
