{"id":16020,"date":"2021-09-20T05:49:58","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T05:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/"},"modified":"2021-09-20T05:49:58","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T05:49:58","slug":"sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/tech\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francophone Africa has its first unicorn, and if you\u2019ve been following tech on the continent, you will be very unsurprised to hear that it\u2019s coming from the world of fintech. Wave, a U.S. and Senegal-based mobile money provider, has raised $200 million in a Series A round of funding. The investment is the largest-ever Series A round for the region, and it values Wave at $1.7 billion. Four big-name backers jointly led the round \u2014 Sequoia Heritage, an endowment-style fund and a separate entity that operates independently under the Sequoia brand; Founders Fund; payments giant Stripe; and Ribbit Capital. Others in the round include existing investors Partech Africa and Sam Altman, the former CEO of Y Combinator and current CEO of OpenAI. The mobile money market in sub-Saharan Africa is growing exponentially. This past year, up to $500 billion has moved through the accounts of 300 million active mobile money users in the region. But despite being one of the largest alternative financial infrastructures known globally, this represents only a fraction of the overall market. The International Monetary Fund says that as of 2017, only 43% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa were \u201cbanked\u201d by way of a traditional bank or mobile money account. When it comes to growing that proportion, however, mobile money \u2014 based on simpler technology and with an easier onboarding process \u2014 wins out, and it is set to capture more market share faster than… Click below to read the full story from TechCrunch
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Francophone Africa has its first unicorn, and if you\u2019ve been following tech on the continent, you will be very unsurprised to hear that it\u2019s coming from the world of fintech. Wave, a U.S. and Senegal-based mobile money provider, has raised $200 million in a Series A round of funding. The investment is the largest-ever Series…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1802,"featured_media":16021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[35],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nSequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation - The Daily Herald<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation - The Daily Herald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Francophone Africa has its first unicorn, and if you\u2019ve been following tech on the continent, you will be very unsurprised to hear that it\u2019s coming from the world of fintech. Wave, a U.S. and Senegal-based mobile money provider, has raised $200 million in a Series A round of funding. The investment is the largest-ever Series…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Daily Herald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-09-20T05:49:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tage Kene-Okafor\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Daily Herald\",\"description\":\"Your Super Aggregated News, Blog & Magazine\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/16020-sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation.jpg\",\"width\":600,\"height\":400,\"caption\":\"Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/\",\"name\":\"Sequoia Heritage, Stripe and others invest $200M in African fintech Wave at $1.7B valuation - The Daily Herald\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-09-20T05:49:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-09-20T05:49:58+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/5a35934fe32d3cc432fee1a4f48119af\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/uncategorized\/sequoia-heritage-stripe-and-others-invest-200m-in-african-fintech-wave-at-1-7b-valuation\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/5a35934fe32d3cc432fee1a4f48119af\",\"name\":\"Tage Kene-Okafor\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c72d2fb58a89bf2a40c1162f2e3a3e77?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Tage Kene-Okafor\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","amp_validity":null,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyherald.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}