By Semafor Africa
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
African fintech Moniepoint plans to use a money transfer platform launched this week as the first step toward building a larger financial services company serving Nigerians in the UK, an executive told Semafor.
The MonieWorld service enables money transfers from the UK to Nigeria and is the latest in a growing number of remittance products from Africa targeting the $100 billion that flows annually from immigrants in the diaspora to the continent. The move by the Lagos-headquartered payments and digital bank provider comes months after it received investment from the US payments giant Visa. Moniepoint was valued at more than a billion dollars following a $110 million fundraising round last October, in which Google’s Africa Investment Fund participated.
While Moniepoint does not intend to become a regulated banking entity in the UK, providing remittances will help the company create a platform that gives users “the ability to send, spend and save money,” Ravi Jakhodia, CEO of the company’s UK business, told Semafor.
