Tanda, a Kenyan-based start-up banking service, plans to expand regionally shortly after receiving funding from 4 investors and securing a strategic partnership with Mastercard and the Nigerian digital payments company, Interswitch.
The startup turns local neighbourhood stores into one-stop,1 shops for airtime, bill payments, banking and insurance services. Today Tanda’s platform and network supports 58 banks and SACCOs, 4 telecoms, 18 billers, 12,000 merchants and agents and has served over 300,000 unique customers, processing millions of transactions to date.
“Our team will continue to run the 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.
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“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,” said Geoffrey Mulei, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tanda.
Tanda has now set its sights on growing its Kenyan footprint to 100,000 agents and merchants and expanding to Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda within the next 24 months.
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 before Tanda.
“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.
Tanda has enabled banks, telcos, and various 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.
