Kuda Bank Raises $55 Million In Another Round Of Funding

The London-based, Nigeria-operating startup, Kuda Bank has announced that it has raised $55 million at a $500 million valuation for another round of funding.

Kuda Bank has been on a growth tear in the last several months taking on incumbents in the country with a mobile-first, personalised and often cheaper set of banking services built on newer, API-based infrastructure.

Kuda has secured a series B of $55 million via its London entity. The company plans to use the money to double down not just on new services for Nigeria, but to prepare its launch into more countries on the continent, and in the words of co-founder and CEO Babs Ogundeyi, to build a new take on banking services for “every African on the planet,” according to Techcrunch.

The funding was estimated at $500 million and it comes on the back of some admirable early growth for the startup.

Ogundeyi said in an interview that the company is doing a lot to expand and build a strong team in Nigeria.

“We’ve been doing a lot of resource deployment has been in our operational entity, in Nigeria. But now we are doubling down on the expansion and the idea is to build a strong team for the expansion plans for Kuda,”

“We still see Nigeria as an important market and don’t want to be distracted so don’t want to disrupt those operations too much. It’s a strong market and competitive. It’s one that we feel we need to have a stronghold on. So this funding is to invest in expansion and have more experience in the company with relation to expansion.”

Kuda now has 1.4 million registered users, which is more than double the number it had in March when it had 650,000 registered users — a figure it revealed when announcing its Series A of $25 million led by Valar Ventures.

It reported that Series B was a relatively quick inside round coming from existing investors. Co-led by Valar Ventures and Target Global, it also includes SBI and a number of previous angels also participating. Kuda was not proactively raising money at the time Series B was initiated and closed.

“Kuda is our first investment in Africa and our initial confidence in the team has been upheld by its rapid growth in the past four months,” he said.

“With a youthful population eager to adopt digital financial services in the region, we believe that Kuda’s transformative effect on banking will scale across Africa and we’re proud to continue supporting them.”