Pan-African digital payments network, MFS Africa, has raised $100 million in equity and debt, additional financing bringing its Series C round to $200 million. African investment manager Admaius Capital Partners led the new round. Investors from its first Series C round, such as AfricInvest FIVE and CommerzVentures, doubled, while the fintech also received capital from new investors: Vitruvian Partners and AXA Investment Managers. Debt financing came from Stanbic IBTC Bank, a Lagos-based bank, and Symbiotic. According to the MFS Africa statement, the new investment will enable it to achieve four goals. First of all, to continue with its expansion plans in Africa. It will also help you further integrate into the global digital payment ecosystem. Then expand into Asia and create cross-border payment synergies with Africa through a joint venture with LUN Partners. And carry out its growth plans for BAXI, a startup that it acquired at the end of last year. These plans mirror what founder and CEO Dare Okoudjou told TechCrunch last November when the company announced its first $100 million tranche. At the time, the Baxi acquisition was still pending approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria, the country’s main bank. Not only was the purchase approved, BAXI now holds two licenses to operate in the country: the Payment Service Solution Provider (PSSB) and Payment Terminal Service Provider (PTSP) licenses. The PSSP license allows BAXI to build gateways that process payments for third-party merchants, and the PTSP license gives BAXI the go-ahead to implement its point-of-sale terminals for bank agencies. MFS Africa, known for its acquisition-led expansion games, last week acquired US-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) in a cash-and-stock deal worth $34 million. The London-based, Africa-focused company connects more than 320 million mobile money wallets in more than 35 African countries and 700 brokers. But despite these connections across borders, millions of Africans are still unable to use their mobile money accounts to pay for subscription-based services operated by international companies like Netflix and Amazon. GTP is a developer of prepaid and mobile payment software. According to PitchBook, its prepaid and mobile payment platform integrates multiple prepaid cards with a single bank account and allows users to make prepaid payments for online purchases and ATMs. The acquisition gives MFS Africa an avenue to issue prepaid cards to its customers so they can perform these tasks, and also serve the African diaspora market in the US economic activities across the continent through interoperability between everyone,” Okoudjou said in a statement. “Our multiple initiatives and solutions provide access to Africans, at home and in the diaspora. We are building MFS Africa into a secure, robust, scalable, high-impact pan-African payment infrastructure that will facilitate Africa’s fast-growing trade, both now and in the future.” The fintech also highlighted its efforts to hire two people to map out its next phase of growth: Meghan Taylor, a former partner at Boston Consulting Group who is now its chief of staff, and Julian Adkins, a former Africa CFO at the telecom operator. Millicom, who operates as the company’s group financial director.
