PalmPay has announced its launch in Nigeria. This is after it received $40 million funding led by a Chinese mobile phone company, Transsion.
The investment was made through Transsion’s Techno subsidiary as Chinese company Netease and Madiatek company from Taiwan participated.
The firm aims to become Africa’s largest financial services platform. It has entered into partnership with Tecno, Infinix and Itel as it has pre-installed PalmPay app on about 20 million phones in 2020.
Palmpay offers a package of mobile-based financial services such as no-fee payment options, bill pay, rewards programs and discounted airtime. In Nigeria, the firm will offer 10% cashback on airtime purchases and bank transfer rates as low as 10 Naira.
Greg Reeve, Palmpay CEO, told TechCrunch that in addition to launching in Nigeria, Palmpay has plans to use its $40 million seed funding to expand in Ghana and other countries in 2020.
The Nigerian Central Bank licensed Palmpay as a mobile operator by the in July. During the pilot phase PalmPay was able to register 100,000 users and processed about 1,000,000 transactions.
Other digital payment entrants have expanded in Nigeria and they include Chippercash, Paga and Interswitch. Mr Greg Reeves is optimistic that PalmPay can compete in Nigeria based on a couple of strategic advantages including the support it has from Transsion and the partnership with Tecno.
Tecno and Transsion are the largest sellers of smartphones in Africa and has a manufacturing facility in Ethiopia. Earlier in September Tecno was able to raise $400 million in a Shanghai IPO and it plans to invest $ 300 million in new Research & Development and manufacturing strategies in both Africa and Globally.
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