Leatherback Limited, a financial services provider has secured a $10 million pre-seed funding from Zedcrest Capital, a leading pan-African principal investment firm.
With the new funding, the fintech said it wants to focus on critical activities such as hiring strategic roles, marketing and branding strategy, and traction and visibility in the market.
According to the startup, some of the funding will be deployed to raise Leatherback’s profile in the fintech space as well as extend its capacity in the many countries that it is licensed in and where it is about to be approved like South Africa, Egypt, Uganda, India, and the UAE.
Ibrahim Toyeeb, Co-Founder and CEO said the pre-seed funding received is the very first as the business had been bootstrapped by owners’ funds. He said, “This is the first time we have raised funds externally. It’s a massive step forward that will allow us to take our business and our vision to the next level.”
“Building local capacity is not easy, yet it is core to how we operate at Leatherback. The capital injection will further strengthen the value we provide by ensuring a solid presence and infrastructure so we can offer solutions directly to customers with better pricing.”
Adedayo Amzat, Zedcrest Capital’s Group Managing Director, said “As principal investors, we love opportunities where we can bring our expertise to bear. It has been rewarding to provide operational and strategic support to Leatherback in its quest to build the perfect compliance, technology, and finance infrastructure that will allow it to be the operating system of choice for the global mobility of businesses and individuals.”
Leatherback is a UK-based cross-border payments platform regulated by the FCA in the UK, Fintrac in Canada, the Central Bank of Nigeria and other regulatory authorities in countries it is licenced in. In addition to promoting business expansion and removing barriers to business growth across continents, the startup said it offers a multiple currency solution that allows businesses and individuals to conduct global transactions quickly and efficiently through its digital payments’ infrastructure.
