Nigerian Blockchain Payments Startup, Bitmama Secures $2m Pre-Seed Round

Blockchain payments startup, Bitmama has raised a total sum of $2 million in its pre-seed round, having raised a an additional $1.65 million in funding, with $350,000 pre-seed initially raised October 2021 including investors Unicorn Growth Capital, Launch Africa Ventures, Adaverse and Flori Ventures.

Investors from the earlier pre-seed round together with new investors like Tekedia Capital,  GreenHouse Capital, ODBA, Five35 Ventures, Chrysalis Capital, Enrich Africa, Thrive Africa, Angellist Ventures, and angel investors including CELO founders: Rene Reinsberg, and Marek Olszewski, and Honey Ogundeyi, were involved in the new round.

Bitmama in a statement shared with TechCabal said the new pre-seed round will be utilized to expand the operational presence of the company, strengthen its team across different markets, consolidate its product offerings, and plot market penetration across Africa.  The company further averred that with the expansion, it will work to rapidly scale new use cases for cryptocurrency within the continent.

The company, with its current presence in African countries like Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, allows users trade several currencies, while affording them the opportunity to use their debit cards for regular online payments. Users can also use their debit cards to pay utilities and perform transactions like staking to hedge against currency devaluation.  

The company’s flagship products are the Btmama exchange and Changera.

Bitmama exchange allows users have access to virtual assets, while they explore other crypto use cases. Changera on the other hand is a social payment solution that let users use their funds without limits anywhere they are in the world.

The founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bitmama, Ruth Iselema, while speaking on the funding round asserted that both Bitmama exchange and Changera are approaching 100,000 users across the African market, even as they both recordmpressive daily active users.

“We are building Africa’s most user-friendly, innovative blockchain company, and we are glad to have the backing of seasoned investors and partners who have walked similar turfs. We are privileged to learn from their blended experiences across corporate and blockchain business verticals,” she added.

In the words of the founding partner for one of the pre-seed round investors, Five35 Ventures, Hema Vallabh :

“Being a leading female-focused VC fund, we at Five35 Ventures look forward to helping Ruth and her dynamic team scale Bitmama, especially seeing the growth of Changera, the remittance platform that allows all Africans to transact internationally at much cheaper rates than established remittance companies in the market.”