Lipa Later has raised USD 12 million from a consortium of investors. The firm is a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) company operating in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria.
The funding, which is a mix of equity and debt, will help Lipa Later expand within its current markets and into new markets such as Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania.
It will also allow Lipa Later to provide its Buy-Now-Pay-Later services to its substantial current pipeline of consumers supporting Lipa’s exclusive partnerships with world-class merchants in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Lipa Later, which started in Kenya in 2018 has built a reputation for delivering value for its investors right from its early days; the company’s recent round of funding attracted backing from Cauris Finance, Lateral Frontiers VC, GreenHouse Capital, SOSV IV LLC, Sayani Investments and Axian Financial Services.
Other than the traditional offline method of buyers purchasing items in stores, Lipa Later has tapped into the rapidly growing online presence across Africa and built a unique Buy Now Pay Later option API that integrates into e-commerce platforms enabling merchants to sell products directly to consumers and pay for them in affordable monthly instalments.
Lipa Later’s proprietary one-of-a-kind credit scoring and machine learning system enables the consumer to sign up and get a credit limit in seconds without the need for bulky documentation and a long lengthy credit approval process.
The company has an exclusive merchants and world-renowned brands such as Carrefour, Apple, Tecno, Samsung just to mention a few.
“Over the last few years, we have watched Eric Muli, CEO of Lipa Later and his team put together the building blocks for Pan-African expansion and this round of funding takes Lipa Later one step closer to being the dominant Buy-Now-Pay-Later player on the Continent,” says Samakab Hashi, Partner at Lateral Frontier VC,one of Lipa Later’s first investors.
