Ghanaian digital savings startup BezoMoney has raised US$200,000 in seed funding to finance its continued expansion and growth.
Founded in August 2019 by Mubarak Sumaila and Diana Osei after they took part in the Accra-based Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) programme, BezoMoney offers a digital savings platform called BezoSusu that helps users save effectively, receive bulk capital through group savings, and build a savings and credit history.
The startup raised US$100,000 in pre-seed funding after graduating from MEST, and has now secured a seed round worth US$200,000 from GOODsoil VC, a venture capital firm based in London focused on accelerating the growth of tech startups in Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK.
BezoMoney will use the funds to acquire a Payment and Financial Technology Service Providers (PFTSP) license in Ghana, as well as build and deploy new products, including BezoCredit, an interest-free credit product, and BezoInvest, an investment product. It also plans to grow its user base exponentially, expand its team, and scale across Ghana.
“Our goal from the start has been to help the unbanked to people gain upward social mobility. There are a lot of people in the informal sector in Africa, and hardly do their lives improve in any way from year to year. Through our research work, we realised that this is a result of their limited access to formal financial services which stems from their inability to build verifiable credit histories even though they save and access credit though informal financial schemes,” said Sumaila, the startup’s chief executive officer (CEO).
“BezoMoney exists to change that. We are committed to growing with our customers and meeting their financial needs with tailored products and services.”
Orla Enright, general partner of GOODsoil VC, said the BezoMoney team was providing unbanked and youthful populations with easy access to powerful and flexible wealth-generating tools that are typically hard to access.
“We are excited to partner with BezoMoney to accelerate their growth and assist them in their scale,” she said.
MEST managing director Ashwin Ravichandran said he was excited that BezoMoney had received the investment.
“Their team has remained resilient and we are confident about BezoMoney’s impact on the Ghanaian economy,” he said.
