FairMoney, a digital bank based in Lagos and headquartered in Paris, is in discussions to acquire Umba, a credit-led digital bank providing payroll and financial services to customers in Nigeria and Kenya, in a $20 million all-stock deal, sources tell TechCrunch.
Umba, founded by Tiernan Kennedy and Barry O’Mahony in San Francisco in 2018, was launched as a credit-led digital bank targeting emerging markets.
To date, the digital bank has secured around $20 million in funding, per PitchBook data.
FairMoney could likely be more interested in Umba’s microfinance license, obtained in 2022 through acquiring a majority shareholding in Daraja Microfinance Bank.
For FairMoney, acquiring Umba could streamline entry into Kenya, bypassing the lengthy licensing process that took Umba three years.
Captain Fresh, a business-to-business harvest-to-retail marketplace for animal protein, is engaging with investors to raise up to $50 million in fresh funding, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Captain Fresh declined to comment.
The startup specifically focuses on seafood, helping fishermen and farmers sell their catch and livestock to businesses.
Captain Fresh has raised over $100 million prior to the new funding and was valued at $500 million in the previous round, whose first tranche it closed in March 2022.
It has since extended that round to raise another $15 million or so.
Talks of bitcoin spot ETF approval circulate as India blocks exchange sites and crypto is seeing more optimismWelcome back to Chain Reaction.
The crypto space has been off to a strong start for 2024 as reporters and ETF analysts have reported that a bitcoin spot ETF approval in the U.S. could be coming as soon.
This week in web3The latest podFor this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn dove back into the latest developments on spot bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. as anticipation builds.
As it stands, there are 14 asset management firms, including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and VanEck, hoping to individually win approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for their spot bitcoin ETFs.
We also discussed what a spot bitcoin ETF could mean for investors, institutions and miners, as well as bitcoin’s price.
Egyptian B2B e-commerce startup MaxAB and Wasoko, a Kenya-based e-commerce player with operations in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia, are in talks to merge operations, TechCrunch has exclusively learned from multiple sources.
The merger talks come as B2B e-commerce companies in Africa continue to scale back operations due to funding scarcity.
TechCrunch learned that the company had only received $30 million by the time merger talks, which are said to be investor-led, started.
As of last year, the prospect of a merger between MaxAB and Wasoko, both asset-heaving B2B e-commerce startups, seemed unlikely.
The eight-year-old B2B e-commerce company has since expanded to Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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