Ghanaian-based fintech startup BezoMoney a USSD-powered digital saving, credit, and payment platform that links clients with a mobile wallet, while building a credit history to access financial services from formal providers has secured $200k in a seed funding round led by Goodsoil VC, a venture capital firm based in London.
Orla Enright of Goodsoil VC comments on their investment into the African fintech startup.
“Mubarak and his BezoMoney team are providing the unbanked and young people with easy access to powerful and flexible wealth-generating tools that are typically hard to access. We are excited to partner with BezoMoney to accelerate their growth and assist them in their scale.”
According to the fintech, the funding will be used to acquire the Payment and Financial Technology Service Providers (PFTSP) license in Ghana, build and deploy new products including BezoCredit, an interest-free credit product, and BezoInvest, an investment product. BezoInvest will allow users to invest their savings. In addition, the funding will be used to grow its user base, expand its team, and scale across the country.
BezoMoney
Founded in 2019, BezoMoney is a fintech company that builds and provides digital financial services and products for unbanked and younger consumers. Founded by Mubarak Sumaila and Diana D. Osei, was born out of the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) programme. Since its inception, the startup has established products that provide social mobility for the unbanked and digitizes transactions of informal savings groups.
In a press statement, BezoMoney provides insight into the aims of the fintech.
“BezoMoney’s vision is to become a digital bank for the unbanked as well as the younger generation; a digital bank that provides financial products and services that span across the entire financial spectrum, meeting the needs of its users on their journey to financial stability.”
Its flagship product called BezoSusu is a digital-personal saving and group savings product that allows users in the informal sector to reach their savings goals. According to the fintech, BezoSusu is built on USSD and is integrated with Mobile Money to allow users to transact via their Mobile Money wallets. In order to provide its services and products, BezoMoney partners with existing financial institutions and mobile operators to meet the regulatory requirements.
Future of BezoMoney
Currently, the fintech is working on beta testing and launching BezoSusu 2.0, launching the BezoSmart Series that features a podcast to provide financial literacy content to the informal sector and to young individuals, and establishing partnership relations with financial institutions and mobile money providers.
Sumaila concluded: “Our goal from the start has been to help the unbanked to gain upward social mobility. There are a lot of people in the informal sector in Africa and hardly do their lives improve in any way from year to year. Through our research, we realized that this is a result of their limited access to formal financial services which stems from their inability to build verifiable credit histories even though they save and access credit through informal financial schemes. BezoMoney exists to change that. We are committed to growing with our customers and meeting their financial needs with tailored products and services. We started focusing on young people as well because they were reaching out to us every day through calls and an email requesting to use our products, so we expanded our offering to include them.”
