OnePipe, an API infrastructural platform has raised $3.5m in a seed round. This is coming almost a year after it raised $950,000 in pre-seed investment.
The seed round was led by Atlantica Ventures, Tribe Capital and V&R associates. Canaan Partners, Saison Capital, Norrsken, The Fund and Two Culture Cap also participated in the round. Further contributors were Chris Adelsbach, Techstars, Ingressive Capital, Acquity, P1, Raba and DFS Lab alongside a few angel investors.
OnePipe is an API platform that focuses on embedded finance. Embedded finance helps companies and brands outside of the core financial sector to distribute financial services. It also allows companies to provide a more diverse spread of customer offerings and experiences.
Speaking on the investment, Aniko Szigetvari, the founding partner at Atlantica Ventures, said he believes OnePipe is capable of boosting the loyalty and revenue of financial bodies.
“In our view, embedded finance is the next enabler for both traditional and financial service businesses to increase customer loyalty and revenue by offering a wide range of third-party financial products and revenue streams for their customers,”
Aniko Szigetvari
Providing digital financial services
OnePipe was founded in 2018 by Ope Adeoye. Its initial focus was to operate as an API platform for open banking but it would later divert into embedded finance due to less demand. In July 2020, it joined the US seed-stage accelerator, Techstars and has since then made great strides.
OnePipe collaborates with banks and non-financial institutions to launch and provide financial services such as credit, accounts and payments within their offerings. This is in line with its vision to help facilitate the distribution of digital services.
OnePipe generates revenue by taking a percentage cut from transactions made on these accounts which it shares with its partner banks. For loans offered via its APIs, OnePipe takes at least 1% of the loan interest from its lending partners and also shares it with the businesses and partner banks.
According to the startup, it has processed more than 6.3 million transactions worth over $46.3 million. The startup operates over 1 million individual accounts and over 138 businesses, ranging from FMCG and retail to lending and agriculture.
Expansion
OnePipe is currently only operational in Nigeria but it is set to expand into other countries. The startup has partnered with Sendy, an African logistics and freight company. This partnership means that payments on Sendy would be powered by OnePipe. According to the company, the plan is to “pull a Stripe-Shopify-esque tag team.”
According to OnePipe CEO, Ope Adeoye, this partnership would enable both companies to expand simultaneously.
“We made sure that before we looked into other African countries, we were going in with a customer on the ground already. We did a deal with Sendy that made them participate in this round, and we will then deploy the capital for expansion. So as they go to Egypt, South Africa, we’ll be deploying with them and grow together.”
Ope Adeoye, CEO OnePipe.
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