in partnership
with FLUTTERWAVE, ENDEAVOR & UK TECH HUB
14.10.2020
Good morning. Nigeria’s Police Chief has said that the members of the disbanded SARS unit are to report for psychological evaluation at the Force Headquarters before being deployed to other Police units. Smells like another mini victory.
In today’s edition:
-Crypto
-Startup funding
-Payments
PARTNER CONTENT
Bamboo, a Flutterwave merchant, gives you unrestricted access to over 3,000 stocks listed on the Nigerian stock exchange and U.S. stock exchanges, right from your mobile phone or computer. With as little as $20, you can create and fund your Bamboo account with your Dollar or Naira cards and through bank transfers. Start buying and selling shares or stock bundles (called Exchange Traded Funds) in just a few taps, begin here.
CRYPTOCURRNECY AND #ENDSARS
Is Nigeria’s Central Bank sabotaging #EndSARS funding efforts?
The protests in Lagos have been funded largely by thousands of people, and fintech startups have made that funding possible.
Flutterwave, which has taken a lead in setting up donation links for the End SARS protests in Nigeria has caught the attention of Nigeria’s Central Bank.
Central Bank Scrutiny
Although it has not yet been confirmed by the Central bank, several tech publications are reporting that Flutterwave’s protest fund raising has caught the attention of the Central Bank.
The Bank will now block donation links because it believes “terrorists” may be funding the protest efforts.
This is depsite the fact that Flutterwave itself donated N2 million to the End SARS protests.
Will Bitcoin save the day?
According to Kay, Nigerians have adjusted so that they don’t lose momentum. The Feminist Coalition, a group that has been at the heart of the protests has made alternative bank and cryptocurrency accounts available.
The Central Bank’s move may unwittingly provide more momentum for cryptocurrency. Just two months ago, Nigeria was at the top of the Sub Saharan Africa peer to peer bitcoin trading volumes totaling an equivalent of $9.8 million.
The South African auto-tech startup, Carscan,has raised an undisclosed amount of funding to help it scale
According to this publication: Carscan is an augmented reality (AR) app with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) that creates an accurate, reliable, agnostic, complete, and traceable digital record of a car.
The platform helps automotive ecosystems buy, sell, rent, service, insure, finance and auction
cars with great confidence by eliminating fraud, governance, and industry risks.
Last mile delivery startup, Dreevo, launches in Egypt
Last mile delivery startup, dreevo, has launched operations after raising a six-figure US dollar pre-seed funding round from EF Logistics, a third-party logistic services provider.
Dreevo provides door-to-door delivery, warehousing and fulfillment and pick-up stations, all of which can be customised to cater to a merchant’s specific business model.
The events of 2020 prove that technology can be our most powerful asset to tackle social problems. On Oct 23, join Endeavor for a day of inspiring conversations with forward-thinking entrepreneurs who are building our collective future. Learn more!
PAYMENTS
According to the NIBSS, Nigerians performed 58.05 million transactions via POS in September.
It is an increase of about 8 million from the transactions registered in August.
What were the value of those transactions?
The value of PoS transactions increased by about 4.76% from N386.3 billion in August to N404.9 billion.
NIBSS numbers show an all-round increase in terms of POS and instant payment in the usage in the country.
Go deeper: read about the NIBSS report and what it means here.
EVENT
How often do people who start their careers in a beer company build a payment-processing company loved by 60,000 businesses in Nigeria?
Not very often, you will agree. You’ll probably even ask “What are the odds?”
For the next episode of Building From Ground Up on Friday, October 23, we’ll be having a conversation with one person who has conquered those odds. The event is powered by the UK-Nigeria Tech Hub.
Shola Akinlade is co-founder and CEO of Paystack, a payments-middleman between ambitious African businesses and their customers in different parts of the world, that has raised over $11m in
funding.
