Eversend, a Neobank for African, has successfully raised nearly €750,000 through its equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs. The funding round was launched last month, originally seeking €550,000. The campaign has attracted more than 750 Seedrs investors.
As previously reported, Eversend describes itself as a digital-only finance platform providing cross-border money transfers, multi-currency wallets, currency exchange, and aspirations to offer personal loans, savings, group savings, merchant payments and investments in the future.
“For Africans and Africans in the diaspora that experience inconvenient and expensive financial services, Eversend is a one-stop financial services hub to exchange, save, manage and send money at the best possible rates, both online and offline.”
Eversend further stated that its mission is to solve the most painful problem that Africans face in financial services.
“We choose to focus on intra-Africa money transfers, where the remaining $21 billion is transferred, as well as money transfers from Sub Saharan Africa to the rest of the world, totalling $14.2 billion annually. For this market there is, as far as we’re aware, no digital solution. It is still dominated by Western Union and MoneyGram. This means fees potentially exceeding 30%, a bus ride to the nearest city, and waiting in line. Eversend integrates with mobile money platforms and costs 2.5-4%.”
Funds from the Seedrs round will be used for the following:
Product Development: Eversend will use some of this money to beef up its product and engineering team so it can ship faster.- User Acquisition: Eversend need to accelerate its user acquisition efforts.
- Working Capital: Some of the funds will remain in company accounts as working capital to beef up Eversend’s netting off reserves.
- Market Expansion: Eversend intends to expand its offering to Nigeria, Francophone Africa, and Europe to make a real connection between Diaspora and Africa.
- Regulatory Compliance: When Eversend closes its seed round, some of the funds will be used for regulatory compliance.
Along with the crowdfunding success, Eversend recently announced the launch of its virtual Visa cards. The virtual cards are notably denominated in US Dollars and can be used to pay for online purchases like Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter ads among other purchases. The virtual cards created on Eversend can be used for up to three years before they expire.
“While the rest of the world can easily pay online, most of Africa is limited by the exorbitant foreign exchange fees charged by banks if a currency conversion takes place. Research commissioned by Eversend shows that banks charge between 5% and 15% if a customer uses their local currency card (KES, UGX, GHS, NGN, etc) to pay online.”
Eversend is now offering 7.67% in equity with a €6,616,739 pre-money valuation. The campaign is set to close mid-July.
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