Fintech startup Infibranches secures $2M to bridge energy gap in Nigeria

Nigerian fintech company, Infibranches Technologies Limited has closed a $2 million funding from All On, a Shell-backed impact investment firm.

This recent capital injection will allow the startup to expand its product offerings, thereby bridging the energy distribution gap in underserved rural and peri-urban areas in Nigeria.

Launched in 2019 by Olusola Owoyemi, Infibranches aims to accelerate financial inclusion and electrification across Sub-Saharan Africa. So far, the startup claims to be the only company in the fintech space to have created a secured avenue that serves as a single-point integration for payments and other related services.

Expressing his delight, the CEO of Infibranches, Olusola Owoyemi, said, “Through this investment, Infibranches plans to speed up customer acquisition in its current markets. This will also improve existing products like Omnibranches, which has served over a million customers, and introduce new products and services to address energy distribution issues”.

According to him, the funding will enable Infibranches to bridge the gap by absolutely conforming to consumers and service providers. Making apparent the link nature of financial insertion and poverty alleviation.

The investment by All On will further push Infibranches to its next phase of growth by funding its need for inventory and acquiring agents for its services, its products and technology can develop while having working capital for business operations while the support will cut across Nigeria, it main focus region to distribute Solar Home System for homes and businesses is in Delta State.

Commenting also, the CEO of All On, Dr. Wiebe Boer said “ This partnership merges fintech and renewables in a way we haven’t seen in Nigeria before and will enable tens of thousands of new electricity connections”.

He revealed that Infibranches’ innovative business model will help to solve the payments and collections problem that is currently facing Solar Home System distributors and mini-grid developers in Nigeria.

A non-profitable initiative, known as The Nigeria Off-Grid Market Acceleration Programme has been supported by Shell Foundation in the United Kingdom, USAID, and UK aid to help Infibranches develop a single payment integration solution for the Nigerian SHS sector which help facilitate payment collection via a network of agents, this includes banks and mobile money agents.

Sam Parker, the CEO of Shell Foundation expressed that the initiative’s work with Infibranches is showing how important it is to continue handling market obstacles thereby enabling enterprises to hastily expand their life-changing energy solutions to homes and small businesses in Nigeria.
Those into agent banking businesses can use this to deliver services such as cash payment, withdrawal, money transfer, utility payments, and telco payments.