Dash, the unified and accessible payments app, announced today that it has raised $32.8 million in an oversubscribed seed round, one of the largest seed rounds for an African technology startup.
The round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners, with participation from Global Founders Capital and 4DX Ventures. Other investors in the round include ASK Capital, Techstars, Guillaume Pousaz’s Zinal Growth Partners, Jitendra Gupta of Jupiter Money, Amrish Rau, CEO of Pine Labs, the founders of Moss, executives from ProcessOut (acquired by Checkout.com), and the founders of PennyLane. The funding will go towards building out Dash’s team, launching new features, and the expansion of its footprint across key markets in Africa.
Dash was founded by Prince Boakye Boampong to create a unified payments app to increase efficiency and accessibility for the estimated 1.3 billion Africans currently transacting via digital payments. In 2014, Mr. Boampong was in Kenya and witnessed the way most unbanked Kenyans were sending money and paying bills with mobile money. “Once I saw that mobile money was more accessible to the average Kenyan, and allowed for faster transactions, without the need for traditional banking, I knew that it was forever going to change the financial landscape in Africa, however, I also recognized that interoperability would immediately pose a challenge.”
Dash’s 1 million+ customers have processed over $1 billion since its launch in 2020, showing exponential month-over-month growth. Currently operating in Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, in January 2022 alone, Dash reported a Total Processed Volume (TPV) of over $300 million, up 3X on a monthly basis from Q4 2021. “We are committed to unifying the financial sector in Africa and leveraging its current technological revolution as more than 400 million smartphones and 548 million mobile money users circulate within the continent. Dash will provide a singular solution for all our users, individuals, merchants, and banks,” said Prince Boakye Boampong.
Read more: Business Wire
