Zambia’s Union54 raises $3m in a seed funding round led by Tiger Global

Union54, a Zambian fintech announced that it has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Tiger Global. Other participants in the round include VC firm Runa Capital, Ace & Company, Todd $ Rahul Angel Fund and Vibe Capital. Some angel investors such as Babs Ogundeyi, CEO of Kuda; Risana Zitha, MD of Renaissance Capital and Gbenga Ajayi, former director of SMB Growth at Wise.

Union54 recently got $125k after graduating from Y Combinator’s summer batch.

Founded in 2020 by Perseus Mlambo and Alessandra Martini, Union54 provides an API for any company to issue virtual and physical cards without a bank partner or processor or credit card processor. It provides BIN sponsorship, transaction processing, and settlement. The company was spun off from a previous company, ZAZU, a challenger bank launched six years ago.

According to the CEO, Perseus Mlambo, the company just went live this month but already has over 50 companies in its sandbox environment. Four of these companies have started issuing virtual cards to their customers. He also added that he is expecting 30 more companies to join before the end of the year.

The company intends to use the funding to expand its workforce and customer base. In Mlambo’s own words, “The purpose of this funding is to help us find the best of African talent, people who want to work on big problems. The investment helps us to be able to go to them and say, ‘hey, we’re a well-funded company, we’ve got customers using us, we’re earning revenue and this is going to be one of the most important companies to come out of Africa.”

He however added that this will place the company in a stronger position to raise an attractive Series A within the next few months