Cleva, a Nigerian fintech startup that aims to make international payments easy and accessible, has secured $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by 1984 Ventures, a U.S.-based venture capital firm that has backed companies like Stripe and Airbnb. The Raba Partnership, Byld Ventures, Firstcheck Africa, and various angel investors also joined the funding round.
Cleva was founded by Tolu Alabi and Philip Abel, two Nigerian entrepreneurs with banking and fintech backgrounds. Alabi is the CEO of Cleva, while Abel is the co-founder and chief technology officer. According to a Techcrunch report, Alabi and Abel have experience building banking products at Stripe, a leading online payment platform that operates in over 40 countries.
The team is uniquely qualified to address this given their experience building banking products at Stripe and robust platforms at AWS. The impressive early growth is a testament to the team’s unique capacity to execute across Africa and the U.S., said Aaron Michel, a partner at 1984 Ventures.
Cleva’s Impact In Nigeria
Nigeria is one of the largest markets for fintech startups in Africa, with over 230 million people using digital services such as mobile money, e-commerce, and online banking. However, there are still many challenges facing the fintech sector in Nigeria, such as low financial inclusion, high transaction costs, regulatory uncertainty, and cyber security risks.
One of these challenges is cross-border payments, which account for about 80% of Nigeria’s total remittances. According to World Bank data, Nigeria received $18 billion worth of remittances from its diaspora living abroad. However, most of these remittances are sent through expensive and inefficient channels such as banks or informal agents.
Cleva aims to solve this problem by offering a fast, cheap, secure, and convenient way for individuals and businesses to receive international payments through its banking platform. Since its launch in July 2023, Cleva has helped thousands of Nigerians open U.S.-based accounts without any paperwork or verification.
Cleva claims that it has achieved a 100% month-on-month revenue growth since its inception. It also boasts that it has partnered with several banks, such as Access Bank, Zenith Bank, and GTBank. Alabi told Techcrunch that Cleva’s vision is to become “the ultimate destination for all cross-border payments” in Africa.
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