Nigerian payments company Duplo has raised $4.3 million in seed funding to launch new products and expand into new business verticals in Nigeria, as reported by Tech Cabal.
The seed funding round included investments from Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund and Y Combinator. Oui Capital also re-invested after participating in the pre-seed round.
On the raise, Peter Oriaifo, Principal at Oui Capital commented “the Duplo team has built an incredible suite of products that improves how businesses make and receive payments from each other, and the growth that the company has experienced since our initial pre-seed investment in 2021 has been nothing short of impressive. It is for this reason that we are excited to back Duplo once more.”
With the latest funding, Duplo has raised a total of $5.6 million to date, including the $1.3 million the company picked up in February.
Read more: Nigerian B2B Payments Startup Duplo Raises $1.3M
While Duplo started out in the payments digitization space, recently the startup has branched out into the lending business thanks to its business-to-business (B2B) buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution.
Rather than simply lending businesses money, Duplo helps finance purchases to increase companies’ working capital.
As Duplo CEO and co-counder, Yele Oyekola, told PYMNTS recently, thinking only in terms of hard currency when it comes to working capital is not enough.
“We’re [launching] a B2B buy now, pay later [product because] we don’t want to give businesses just cash. We’re basically financing their payments because that’s also how you make payments as well,” he said.
See also: BNPL Is the Working Capital Bridge for African SMBs
As PYMNTS has reported, a number of companies are now offering BNPL solutions for businesses in a development that is reshaping the landscape of trade financing.
More on this: BNPL for Business Looks to Rewrite the Rules of Trade Finance
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