Tanda, an agency banking startup based in Kenya, wants to expanding regionally - to East Africa. For this purpose, it closed a funding round last month, February 2021.
Tanda's investors in the funding round last month include HAVAÍC, Zedcrest Capital, DFS Lab, Victor Asemota and 3 more investors. Furthermore, Tanda has secured key strategic partnerships with Mastercard & Interswitch which will further accelerate this growth. The growth comes on the back of successfully pioneering and proving the viability of the interoperable agent and merchant model in Kenya, a model that has only been validated in West Africa prior to Tanda.
Tanda's platform and network today supports 58 banks and saccos, 4 telecoms, 18 billers, 12,000 merchants and agents and has served over 300,000 unique customers, all of which have processed millions of transactions to date.
The agency banking startup has now set its sights on growing its Kenyan footprint to 100,000 agents and merchants and an expansion to Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda within the next 24 months.
According to Geoffrey Mulei, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tanda, “Our team will continue to run aggressive agent and customer acquisition drives across the region, while securing more strategic partnerships in these new markets to further support Tanda’s growth and strategy as we pursue our goal of digitising payments across Africa. Tanda is excited to be at the forefront of the rapid shift towards innovative digital-first solutions, especially in markets that are ripe for disruption."
“We see Tanda at the forefront of the race to digitize the last mile of the African economy by providing a dense network of agents who can be the bridge between online and offline commerce,” said Jake Kendall, Partner at DFS Lab, an investor in Tanda.
About Tanda:
Tanda is an independent agent network operator based in Kenya. Since it started operations in 2018, Tanda has enabled banks, telcos and a variety of digital service providers to serve their customers through a nationwide network of commission based agents, with distribution costs that are a fraction of traditional channels. Tanda aims to make informal banking an accessible and lucrative growth channel for its agents and service providers.
Kenya in focus:
Population: 52.5 million (2019)
GDP: $95.5 billion (2019)
GDP Per Capita: $1816 (2019)
