Nigeria’s Online Commerce Cross-border Payment Startup Klasha Raises $2.4m, Expands to Ghana

Klasha, a San Francisco-based cross-border technology company, has announced that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding to build technology infrastructure for cross-border commerce in Africa.

The investment round was led by Greycroft with participation from Seedcamp, Berrywood Capital, AVG Basecamp Fund, Practical VC, Plug and Play, First Fund, Expert Dojo, 2.12 Angels, MiLA Capital and angels, including Joe Cross, Ex-Marketing Head at Wise (formerly TransferWise), Santosh Ankola, Ex-Head of Product at TechCrunch and Michael Pennington, Co-founder of Gumtree.

With this investment, Klasha will expand its technology to help international B2B and B2C businesses such as ASOS, Zara, Amazon or Zoom to receive payments seamlessly online in African currencies from consumers across Africa.

Klasha’s core technology allows African consumers to pay international online and offline retailers in African currencies while the retailers receive payouts in their dominant currencies, including USD, GBP, EUR. Klasha is currently available in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya and will invest in driving more revenue, growing its current 10,000 customer base, and expanding into new markets with three more African countries set to go live by Q4 this year.

In the same vein, the startup also announced that it has expanded to Ghana. With this launch, Klasha is opening Ghana to seamless international e-commerce and enabling seamless business extension into the region for global merchants. Thus, merchants can readily key into Ghana’s $429 million e-commerce economy, which is expected to rise to $811 million by 2024.  

Launched in Nigeria in May 2021, Klasha’s solution helps merchants worldwide sell online to Africa and receive payments in local African currencies while enjoying superfast last-mile delivery to consumers across the continent. This launch represents Klasha’s first expansion into other African countries.

In addition, the Klasha mobile app is now available in Ghana with added functionalities, including instant transfers of money between Ghana and Nigeria. We have also introduced a multi-currency wallet, giving users the option to hold, exchange and send money in different currencies at the best rate for free. 

On the new funding, founder and CEO of Klasha, ex-Amazon, Net-a-Porter and Shopify, Jess Anuna said: “By 2025, half of the world’s population will live in Africa. At Klasha, we’re building the technology to facilitate frictionless cross-border payments and allow international businesses to scale seamlessly into Africa through our API.

“Equally, we’re giving consumers in Africa the same access to the global e-commerce economy experienced on other continents. It is imperative that African consumers are able to remain globally competitive, which includes having access to the goods they want without payment or delivery restrictions.”

On Klasha’s expansion to Ghana, Anuna has this to say: “Before now, international online and offline businesses faced the challenge of accepting online payments from Africa and even delivering items to Ghana. Our solution will simplify the process, removing payment and last-mile delivery barriers, making it easier and faster for retailers to collect online payments in Ghana, manage payouts and expand seamlessly.”

‍Alison Lange Engel, Partner at Greycroft, said: ”Klasha’s technology allows for seamless cross-border transactions at a time when Africa is rapidly growing and needs both payment and logistics solutions for online commerce. We’re excited to support Klasha and their mission in simplifying borderless payments for commerce in Africa.”

Reshma Sohoni, Founding Partner at Seedcamp, said: ‘’As Africa continues to undergo digitisation, there’s an increasing opportunity for online businesses in Europe and US to garner market share quickly by accepting payments online in African currencies due to the nascent stage of commerce on the continent. Klasha is our first investment in Africa which will allow frictionless scalability for merchants into the continent through their cross-border payment technology, enabling billions of underserved consumers to access their services.’’