Ugandan Paris-based fintech raises $1m in new financing to expand

July 10, 2020 in Business, Companies, Financial Services by Editor

Co-founded by Stone Atwine (centre), Emma Smith (right foreground) and Ronald Kasendwa (left) in 2017, Eversend went live in 2019 with plans to operate in Africa and the European Union.

Eversend, a Ugandan fintech has raised just over a million dollars, more money than anticipated, in a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign launched last year.

Seedrs is an equity crowdfunding platform, headquartered in East London’s Tech City, founded by Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva in 2012. In 2020, Seedrs announced that 250 startups had raised funding through its crowdfunding platform during 2019.

Each business looking for cash on the Seedrs platform sets a target for the amount of cash it wants to raise. If the business doesn’t reach that target, the money raised for that business is then returned to the investors

However according to a report by disrupt-africa.com,  Eversend’s offer was oversubscribed. The start-up planned to raise of EUR550,000 ($613,000) in return for 7.67 per cent equity, but ended up attracting EUR897,000 ($1.015 million), valuing the business at EUR6,616,739 ($7,373,065).

Co-founded by Stone Atwine, American citizen, Emma Smith and Ronald Kasendwa in 2017, Eversend went live in 2019 to provide cross-border money transfer services in a phased expansion across Africa and the European Union. Its headquarters are in Paris, France with Kampala offices located in the Bugolobi suburbs.

The fintech is a multi-currency wallets platform that provides currency exchange, merchant payments and other financial services. Eversend also provides multi-currency wallets and currency exchange, and plans to offer personal loans, savings, group savings, merchant payments and investments in the future

In an April 2019 interview, Atwine said, “I want to build something that makes it easier, faster, secure for people to do things they want to do in their financial lives.”

The million dollars will go towards product development, user acquisition, and regulatory compliance, while it also intends to expand its offering to Nigeria, Francophone Africa, and Europe

“I’m driven and strategic, sitting back to think about the big picture, our market, the product. She’s (Emma) more organised, people-facing, and brings the energy, making sure everything runs and connecting us with the world,” he said.

He continued,  “We’re a very diverse team. With members from different professional fields and origins — our lead developer Ronald and customer service team Ritah, Victoria and Carmen, in Uganda, Kylie from the US, Parth and Ashish from India, and Theresa from Hong Kong.”