Nigerian neobank Yep! raised $1.5M pre-seed to turn an agent network into a super app

Yep! is a "financial super app" with payments, remittance and banking features, built on E-Settlement's agent-banking network across five African markets.

$1.5M pre-seed led by Greenhouse Capital; a $500,000 credit facility in place, with discussions under way to raise it to $10M by end-2022.

Olaoluwa Awojoodu founded E-Settlement, whose PayCentre Africa agent-banking platform operates in Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Togo. He teamed with Airende Ojeomogha, an investment banker who worked at US fintechs Oxygen and Tally, and Garry Ottosen, who built lending programs including consumer and business credit cards for several US banks, to start Yep! and convert the network's underbanked users online while also targeting customers already digital.

Over 42 million rural Nigerian adults lack basic banking services. Yep! targets offline agents and online customers of rivals like Kuda, Carbon and FairMoney, and is testing remittances into Sub-Saharan Africa's $45B inflow market, with diaspora checking and savings accounts, a credit card and a physical bank for African migrants planned. The founders cite past agent lending with low single-digit defaults and having raised "hundreds of millions" in debt as their edge over OPay and TeamApt's digital plays.

Agency banking already reached millions of underbanked customers; the bet is that they convert to digital inside the same network.

The microfinance licence closes the loop E-Settlement couldn't: holding both agents' and consumers' money directly.

The founding team pairs network reach with credit expertise — Ottosen built lending programs for US banks, and the pair claim fast access to credit facilities.

Competition is thinner in the other four markets than in Nigeria, Africa's most prominent fintech market.

An offline distribution network is a fintech's unfair advantage: licences plus agent trust convert customers where app-store marketing can't — but only if the licence lets you hold the money.

As of the 9 March 2022 announcement, Yep! planned to double its agent network past 200,000 by end-2022 and use the pre-seed to commence digital banking services in Nigeria and the other four E-Settlement markets. A $500,000 credit facility was to kick-start working-capital loans to existing merchants, with talks to increase it to $10 million by year-end.