Vehicle Financing Firm Moove Raises $20M

South African mobility FinTech Moove has raised $20 million in financing from Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB), the Johannesburg company announced Thursday (July 14).

According to a news release, the funding — which brings Moove’s total financing to north of $200 million — will help the company expand its vehicle financing to more customers.

See also: Mobility FinTech Moove Raises $105M in Series A

Launched in 2020, Moove says it is “democratizing vehicle ownership across Africa by providing mobility entrepreneurs access to revenue-based financing in markets with low access to credit.”

The company says it uses an alternative credit scoring technology to help customers purchase new cars using a a percentage of their weekly revenue.

“The mobility space in Africa is highly fragmented and informal, and the sector represents an opportunity in a continent where high unemployment is rife,” Moove said, with more than a third of people in South Africa unemployed in the first quarter of this year.

Despite Africa’s status as the world’s fastest-growing continent, it has the lowest per capita car ownership rate, with over 1 billion Africans having limited or no access to vehicle financing.

And as PYMNTS noted when reporting on an earlier Moove funding announcement, poor credit penetration in Africa has prevented more than a billion people there from purchasing new vehicles. Only a tiny fraction of vehicles purchased on the continent are financed, compared to 92% in Europe, while car ownership is under 44 vehicles per 1,000 people, compared to 640 per 1,000 people in Europe.

Read more: Moove Nets $23M To Drive Higher Vehicle Ownership In Africa

“Moove has emerged as part of a new generation of African-born fintechs to lead the charge in the ‘mobility fintech’ sector,” the release said. “This white space addresses the continent’s acute vehicle financing problem and empowers mobility entrepreneurs to become more productive and successful.”

The company said it is also Uber’s largest vehicle supplier in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and also has partnerships with other mobility marketplaces, including Glovo, Swvl, Sendy and Kobo360 across ride-hailing, trucking and logistics, last-mile delivery and mass transit.