To make it easier for Nigerians and Africans to make overseas payments, fintech companies frequently provide virtual foreign bank accounts. In a recent development, Grey, a fintech company that gives African freelancers and remote employees virtual foreign bank accounts, says it has acquired $2 million in seed capital.
Grey was established in July 2020 by Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo as a rapid exchange service to assist Nigerians in converting foreign dollars in their domiciliary accounts into the local currency, the naira. The firm received an unknown pre-seed investment last year, and in March, it was accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator winter batch.
The Nigerian fintech, sponsored by YC, has moved into East Africa, starting from Kenya. CEO Obong said that collaborations accompanied the move with two Kenyan businesses, payments behemoth Cellulant and edtech upstart Moringa.
“We went with Cellulant to power our payment infrastructure for Kenyan shillings,” said the chief executive. “Moringa is like an avenue and channel for training new tech talent, so it made sense to have such a partnership as we are trying to build this for freelancers.”
As a result, users in Nigeria and Kenya can use bank accounts created on the platform to receive international payments from more than 88 countries, convert those payments into local currencies (the naira and the shilling), and then withdraw that money straight to their mobile money or local bank accounts. They can also send money to Europe and the United Kingdom on the platform.
The functionality of Grey has also been improved to accept payouts in Ugandan shillings, a different East African currency, bringing the total supported currencies to six. Obong stated that Tanzania, another country in East Africa, is included in Grey’s regional scope even though the country has not yet seen its official launch. The fintech will broaden into Tanzania within a month, he added.
Grey claims to have 100,000 user accounts, and its numbers have grown by 200% since the start of the year. To supplement this consumer-facing growth and broaden the company’s product offerings beyond transfers and person-to-person payments, COO Aghedo stated that the company secretly developed a business-focused product, Grey Business.
One reason firms across the continent prefer the dollar to pay one another instead of local currencies is the lack of currency interoperability. This issue is being addressed by platforms like Verto, a worldwide B2B payments network that enables African firms to send and receive money internationally using multicurrency wallets. The one-year-old fintech company wants to break into the market with its Grey Business product by giving micro and small enterprises an affordable method for sending and receiving local currencies across the continent.
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For the past two months, Grey Business has been in private beta; the seed financing will aid in its public launch in Nigeria and Kenya. Venture capital firms, including Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Heirloom Fund, and True Culture Fund, are among the investors in the round, along with angel investors like Alan Rutledge, Samvit Ramadurgam, and Karthik Ramakrishnan. Startups like PayDay, which Techstars support, provide comparable services.
“Grey was founded to empower people to live a location-independent lifestyle. “I believe that the least of your worries as a freelancer, remote worker, or digital nomad should be sending or receiving payments, so we’ve made it easy,” said CEO Obong. “We like to say that we’re on a mission to make international payments as easy as sending an email. We want to do impactful work to improve how Africa as a continent interacts with money across its borders.”
Grey Finance Announces Entry into Y Combinator
Nigerian fintech company Grey initially began as an immediate exchange service and recently later renamed from Aboki Africa to something more globally appealing (Grey). It was announced a few weeks ago that it had been accepted into the Winter 2022 startup batch of Y Combinator.
Additionally, the firm recently received an undisclosed sum in pre-seed capital from investors, including Abdul Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Mono and Ingressive Capital.
The introduction of Grey in July 2020 to assist Nigerians in converting the foreign currency in their domiciliary accounts to the local currency, the naira, was the straightforward issue they sought to tackle.
Since Obong has spent most of his career working remotely for foreign businesses, he has consistently had money coming into his domestic accounts. However, he had to visit the bank, withdraw money, and then meet a Bureau De Change operator who would travel great distances for just one exchange.
“It would take the entire day,” Obong, the chief executive officer, said when he was asked about the inspiration behind the idea. “So we set out to build an MVP so everybody who has a domiciliary account would be able to exchange that foreign currency to naira.” And then everybody who had naira and wanted foreign currency should be able to get it in their domiciliary accounts. ”
The initial version operated as follows: through various payment methods, a user deposits dollars or naira into a selected Grey account. The customer’s selected local naira or dollar account will receive payment from the platform’s “automated system bullet” via an offline bureau de change.
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However, after developing the first product and getting feedback, the founders discovered that acquiring payments from abroad remain challenging for some clients. Opening and anticipating inputs into domiciliary accounts take days to weeks, and due to several rules implemented by the country’s central bank, it has become difficult for customers to conduct dollar transfers between and within banks.
After five months of iterations, Grey changed course in July 2021 to offer Nigerians virtual foreign bank accounts in EUR, GBP, and USD. Due to the accounts’ foreign domicile, they are not subject to local law or regulation. Users can convert any money they get into their local currency and deposit it into their bank accounts. Consumers can also send money to the UK or the EU by making deposits in naira and converting them to euros.
While some clients use these accounts, others can access them via Grey Finance’s website. Accordingly, people can convert money using their cards or home bank accounts with the few banks that enable currency transfers to Nigeria.
Grey has expanded to make monthly sales of more than $1 million. A transaction fee of 1% with a $6 maximum is charged. In terms of traction, Obong said that the company’s monthly customers climbed by 36% to 12,000 from December 2021 to January 2022, while revenue increased by 64%.
To assist Nigerians and other Africans with international transfers, fintech companies frequently offer virtual foreign bank accounts. Techstars-supported PayDay and infrastructure supplier Fincra are two other startups that provide comparable services.
Grey Finance is one of the numerous African startups that have been accepted into YC W22, which is anticipated to be the largest batch for African startups yet. Obong stated that his company’s next objective is to respond to a variety of user requests for mobile apps rather than the platform’s predominate web interface and to introduce both virtual and actual foreign-denominated cards.
