Umba, African digital bank, raises $2m in fresh funding round

African digital bank, Umba, has raised $2 million in a round led by new investors including Lachy Groom, ex-Head of Issuing at Stripe; Ludlow Ventures; Frontline Ventures and Act Venture

Currently operational in Kenya and Nigeria, Umba offers free bank accounts and financial services to its customers. It was founded in Barry O’Mahony, Lauren Thorp, and CEO Tiernan Kennedy in 2018.

In 2019, Umba closed a funding round with two leading Irish venture capital firms that will pave the way for the company to lend up to €1 million a month. Then it claimed that it had 170,000 customers in Africa.

According to Umba’s CEO Tiernan Kennedy, “From the outset we built our platform to serve multiple markets, currencies and payment infrastructures. This flexibility is an extremely important consideration as it’s much harder to upgrade your systems at a later date. For example, bank and debit card penetration is high in Nigeria, so Umba is deeply integrated into those payment methods, while across Kenya and East Africa mobile money is dominant so our platform is tightly integrated with those services, too.”

Umba competes with the likes of Kuda, Mint, Sparkle and more in their operational countries. Kuda, for one, raised $10 million for its business just a month ago.