In the first three quarters of 2022, there were 414 individual investors in Africa’s FinTech market, up 12% from the same period the year before. African FinTech investors took part in 536 investment rounds in total, which is an increase of 6% from the same time in 2021. They took part in 1.3 rounds on average in 2022, according to data. With seven investments each, Future Africa, a Nigerian startup investor, and Y Combinator, an early-stage startup investor, were the two most active African FinTech investors between Q1 and Q3 of 2022.
Tripesa’s pre-seed fundraising round, which provides payment solutions for Africa’s travel and tourism industry, was Future Africa’s most recent African FinTech venture. The most recent African FinTech investment made by Y Combinator was in the pre-seed round of financing for card issuer Bridgecard. The S22 batch of the Y Combinator programme, which was recently completed and culminated with a demo day in September 2022, was instrumental in the early stages of firms like Airbnb, Coinbase, and Dropbox, among others.
Three of the 219 firms that have been disclosed so far have an African base, making up seven of the total. These include the previously mentioned Bridgecard as well as Pivo Technology, a digital bank for African freight carriers; Anchor, a platform for banking as a service in Africa; and Pivo Technology. With 24 start-ups from the continent participating in the W22 batch of the accelerator, which was the previous iteration, there were more African participants than ever before, including 10 fintech firms.