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Lagos, Nigeria – Leading digital financial services company, Carbon, has released it’s 2019 financial statements audited by KPMG, detailing its product growth and $17.5mm in revenue.Carbon began operations in 2012 and within the space of six years, it grew revenue steadily, reaching an all-time high of $17.5mm in full-year 2019. In the same year, Carbon expanded its product offerings to the Kenyan market and it’s disbursement volumes have grown from N13bn (2018) to N23bn.Formerly called Paylater, Carbon pioneered instant lending in Nigeria and was the first mobile app to provide access to credit digitally and without requesting individuals to present the documents and collateral traditionally associated with accessing loans. Earlier this year, Carbon introduced its iOS app and USSD (*1303#) service. It also announced its Disrupt Fund, a $100,000 Pan-African fund to address the lack of capital for African tech startups.“The company will continue to share it’s audited financials annually, thus upholding a culture of transparency and accountability,” says Ngozi Dozie, Founder of Carbon.So far this year, Carbon has introduced multiple new features for its customer base including Carbon Express: a keyboard allowing users to make payments from any social app, periodic investments, free bank transfers, monthly wallet interest, and more.Carbon also plans to introduce debit cards, a reward program for loyal customers and SME accounts for entrepreneurs, in the months to come.You can find the full annual report here (https://bit.ly/2YNuvPw).About Carbon: Carbon (https://getCarbon.co) is a pan-African digital financial institution accessible via smartphones and which provides individuals with access to credit, a fee-free/interest-earning wallet, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management.Our mission is to empower opportunity globally through friction-free finance that empowers individuals and businesses. We are a global company of over 100 employees with operations in Nigeria, England and Kenya.

Carbon began operations in 2012 and within the space of six years, it grew revenue steadily, reaching an all-time high of $17.5mm in full-year 2019. In the same year, Carbon expanded its product offerings to the Kenyan market and it’s disbursement volumes have grown from N13bn (2018) to N23bn.

Leading digital financial services company Carbon from Nigeria posted all-time high growth last year

“Common investor wisdom is to stay in your market and dominate. This assumes that you are expanding on your own but we believe that by collaborating and partnering deliberately, Carbon and other tech companies can scale faster and build more enduring platforms,” Chijioke Dozie, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Carbon, said. 

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.Consumer lending platform Carbon, which rebranded in April as parent company OneFi continues to transition into being a full digital banking platform after raising US$5 million in debt funding and acquiring Nigerian payments startup Amplify, has been busy expanding its offering, and has also moved into new markets with a Kenyan launch.Its “Disrupt fund” is the first of its kind by an African fintech startup, and will invest up to US$10,000 per startup for five per cent equity. Portfolio companies will also be given access to Carbon’s API, allowing them to leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform to get to market faster. Carbon expects the initiative to spark more collaboration and further investment that should drive growth across the ecosystem, and is accepting applications from companies with operations in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Egypt. Startups looking to apply for the fund must have a functioning product, be post-revenue, and be looking to operate in multiple countries. The fund has a wide investment mandate but target sectors include insurance, health and education.“There are many excellent companies across the continent looking for the kind of scale Nigeria offers and we are excited to partner with them to provide the support and financial investment they need. We are equally excited to expand beyond Nigeria and Kenya by working with a new generation of innovators across the continent and sharing our experience to tackle common obstacles to growth.”

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.

Lending through a pandemic COVID-19 has prevented them settling into Kenya, where there are no less than 50 digital lending platforms competing for an adult population that is over 80% financially included.  Reports of predatory lending have increased red tape in the East African country. A newly gazetted directive bars digital lenders from reporting defaulting borrowers below certain amounts to credit bureaus, among other rules.  It increases the time it will take for a new entrant like Carbon to comfortably express its various services. “We haven’t really had a chance to test the engine,” Dozie says, but they have given out enough loans to calibrate their algorithm. In Nigeria, they have reduced lending to shore up against the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, revising the repayment schedule for 9,016 loans. However, Dozie says they are currently at more than half the level achieved last year, in value and volume. Another profitable year ahead? Carbon’s products need overall improvement, in responding to customer complaints (see responses to this tweet) about deductions, and notification lags, among others. The pandemic’s impact on the Nigerian economy could have an effect on the company’s bottom line. Profit in the next report might as well be less impressive than what this year’s report contains. “It will be easier to beat [this year’s] numbers in naira terms, but we are all at the mercy of macroeconomics on the dollar terms,” Dozie says. He says they will report whatever happens, as part of a long-term pitch to customers who, he believes, will be impressed by an honest expression of financial strength. Otherwise, focus remains on leveraging other strategic moves from 2019, notably the acquisition of payments startup Amplify.  The latter’s intellectual property has gone into developing an SME platform, as well as in developing Carbon Express, a smartphone keypad button that can be used for instant transactions within any app. Carbon acquired Amplify particularly for this feature and their engineering. Maxwell Obi, one of Amplify’s two co-founders who joined Carbon as part of the deal, has left the company, but the others have been instrumental in building valuable aspects like an iOS app.

Another value-adding space is credit reporting. Carbon doesn’t produce the reports; they source from partner bureaus, and make them available to customers. 

In an audited report published this week, Carbon, the Nigerian fintech company, declared that it made the naira equivalent of $312,905 in profit after tax in 2019. 

Nigeria’s leading digital financial services company, Carbon in an effort to improve the experience of its customers, has launched Carbon Express – A keyboard extension that allows customers to access Carbon services from within whatever app they are using.

Also, in its quest to become a digital bank, Carbon acquired a microfinance bank license. According to Dozie, the license means that Carbon’s customers are afforded additional protection through depositors’ insurance via the NDIC. The Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, a federal insurance agency, protects depositors and guarantees the settlement of insured funds when a financial institution can no longer repay their deposits. With that in place, Dozie says the typical Carbon wallet is now a full-fledged bank account, and customers can perform transactions on the platform as they would with any bank.Like Carbon, other startups on the continent have followed suit by releasing year-on-year metrics. In recent memory, most of these startups play in the fintech and crypto-exchange space. But Carbon remains unique amongst this crop of companies as it releases both transaction stats and real insights into its financial performance.Whereas transaction stats tend to highlight a seemingly explosive year-on-year growth of a company, a comprehensive view of financials will likely show a mixed performance. For instance, Carbon generated $17.5 million in revenue for FY2019, up 68% from 2018. For that same period, it recorded a 23% decrease in its profit after tax numbers, a 222% rise in total liabilities and 107% increase in assets finishing the year off with a 6% increase in total equity.It’ll be interesting to see what these numbers look like for 2020. But that’s not the only event to keep an eye on. In addition to its $10 million Series A from SA-based Net1 UEPS Technologies and a $5million debt financing in 2019 from Lendable, Dozie says the digital bank, which also has a presence in Kenya, is ramping efforts to raise a Series B round soon to consolidate its position on the continent.

In 2018, Carbon, a Nigerian fintech startup, made its financials public for the first time. Although typical for foreign private startups, it’s almost an anomaly in Africa. There have been rare cases in the past, for instance, when Rocket Internet had to include Jumia’s financials in its yearly reports after going public. At the time, the German investment outfit was a founding shareholder in the African-based unicorn.

Nigerian digital bank Carbon hit $240M in payments processed last year, up 89% from 2019

Nigerian fintech firm Carbon — an early-stage financial services startup based in Lagos — has posted on its website financials audited by KPMG.This comes four months after the company obtained a credit rating as a pre-IPO venture. Carbon — which recently rebranded its OneFi holding company and PayLater product titles into one name — plans to continue releasing its financial results on an annual basis, co-founder and CEO Chijioke Dozie told TechCrunch.This may not be totally unheard of in other global tech markets, but for startups in Africa’s big tech hubs — such as Nigeria — it’s a rarity.One of the first glimpses into startup financials in Nigeria came when Jumia shareholder Rocket Internet went public in 2014, which required it to include limited Jumia data in its annual report. The accompanying prospectus to Jumia’s listing this year on the New York Stock Exchange offered the most expansive financial data to date on a tech venture operating in Africa.Prior to this — and still for the most part — companies in the continent’s (mostly) pre-public (earlier-stage) startup hubs — such as Nigeria — provide little to no financial performance info.“Typically, in the local market, we have not seen a lot of voluntary transparency or the availability of data,” said Lexi Novitske — a Lagos-based VC investor at Acuity Venture Partners.“Most startups are concerned such disclosure could expose losses, give market intel to competitors or attract unwanted attention from regulators. It could also lead to negative negotiation leverage if partners saw that they were making good returns.”So why’d Carbon go to the trouble of putting its pre-public accounting out in the open for anyone to see?

Clients and recruiting were two reasons. “From a customer perspective, we are trying to get people to trust us with their financial services…so they can see this is the institution I’m dealing with and this is their financial position,” explained Carbon’s Dozie.Carbon has evolved from its original focus as an online lender to offer a broader array of mobile-based financial services — including payments, investment products, credit reports and business banking services. In March, the company acquired Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify for an undisclosed amount.By stats offered by Briter Bridges and a 2018 WeeTracker survey, fintech now receives the bulk of VC capital and deal-flow to African startups, many of which are attempting to reach the continent’s large unbanked and underbanked populations.Carbon fits into that category and its CEO believes being upfront about the startup’s financial position will attract top talent. “From a recruitment perspective, we want recruits to know we have good prospects — that this is a company that’s doing well and wants to keep doing well,” said Dozie.That impression is buoyed by Carbon’s initial results, which were fairly positive for a Series A-stage startup. The company had revenues in 2018 of $10 million, according to its online annual report, and turned a profit of around $500,000.It’s helped with recruiting interest, according to Dozie, who said he’d marked an increase in candidates inquiring about open positions since the results were posted.

we don’t get considered because investors don’t really think that you can get the results or this performance in the markets that we’re in,” he added — noting that Carbon has operations in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa and is considering expansion in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC and Egypt.Investor Lexi Novitske thinks Carbon offering financial performance data is a good thing for Africa’s tech ecosystem. “The move builds trust from clients, partners or investors in a market where there is not a lot of openness,” she said. “I am encouraged to see how other companies will react. My hope is that more will openly report their own metrics…”Dozie says the company will continue to post audited financials on an annual basis, even if they show losses. If the startup continues to expand, attract capital and talent and grow revenues, other Nigerian fintech firms may follow suit.

In 2012, two brothers, Chijioke Dozie and Ngozi Dozie, founded Carbon, a Nigerian digital bank start-up. Carbon began as a digital lending company, but now the company provides a variety of services, from payments to savings to investments. According to Dozie, “Our annual report will be released in the second quarter after our financial audit is complete, to gain customer trust, Chijioke Dozie, the CEO, told ProWellTech in 2019 that the company will make Carbon’s financials public.” If you note, before we published the 2019 fiscal year update, we released a year under review in January 2020.Gross profits, profit or loss before and after tax, liabilities and equity, total assets, etc. are included in Carbon’s annual report. Carbon’s year of analysis reveals processed payments, client base, disbursed loans, and investments made on the platform. The business with about 659,000 customers processed N96.54 billion (~$241.35 million) according to Carbon’s year of analysis for fiscal year 2020, which is up 89 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. N25.51 billion (~$63 million) was the disbursement volume for its lending arm, an improvement of 9.1 percent from the 2019 financial year. Investments worth N13.02 billion (~32.55 million) were made on the site, up by 365 percent from FY 2019.The factors that affected these numbers last year, according to the company, included the launch of an iOS app that pushed clients Acquisition, introducing its feature for low-income customers with USSD banking services; and a social chat feature to allow faster transactions. Besides that, Carbon obtained a microfinance bank license in an attempt to become a digital bank. The license implies, according to Dozie, that Carbon’s customers are given additional protection by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation through depositor insurance. The standard Carbon wallet is now a full-fledged bank account, Dozie says, and clients will transact on the platform like any bank would.

Carbon is a financial service provided by Carbon Finance & Investments Limited (RC 1044655), licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). We empower individuals with credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities, and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. We are a global company of over 90 employees with a presence in Mauritius, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, South Africa, and Kenya.

Your money is always working harder for you.Earn up to 11% interest p.a. when you invest with Carbon.

Your Carbon account allows you enjoy cheaper transactions, zero account fees, and an annual interest of 2% per annum.

We empower individuals with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. Carbon is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. We are a global company of over 90 employees with operations in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya

Carbon is a financial service provided by Carbon Finance & Investments Limited (RC 1044655), licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). We empower individuals with credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities, and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. We are a global company of over 90 employees with a presence in Mauritius, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, South Africa, and Kenya.

Nigerian fintech startup, Carbon, just announced that it has launched a $100,000 pan-African fund for startups.According to the company, the Carbon Disrupt Fund was set up to address the lack of funding and support holding back budding tech entrepreneurs on the continent. It will invest up to $10,000 per startup in exchange for a 5% equity.Also, startups will have access to Carbon’s API, and leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform, to get to market faster. Additionally, the fund will provide mentorship, access to Carbon’s customers and payment platform, as well as office space in Carbon’s Lagos offices.

Its latest service – Carbon Express – enables users to initiate and complete transactions such as P2P transfers and bill payments from the keyboard without launching the Carbon app or leaving the app they are using. Instead, they will be able to access services from the touch of their keyboard enabling quicker Instagram or WhatsApp commerce.

Carbon’s Disrupt fund, the first of its kind by an African fintech startup, will invest up to $10,000 per startup (for 5 percent equity) and give access to Carbon’s API, allowing investees to leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform, to get to market faster. Acknowledging that its success is dependent on the growth of the tech ecosystem, Carbon expects the initiative to spark more collaboration and further investment that should drive growth across the ecosystem.

Carbon (Formerly Paylater Ghana)Paylater or Carbon is another Ghanaian lending platform which operates online and is for all calibre of people. The company believes in giving out financial assistance to deserving individuals without the need for collateral or any physical contacts.All payments and application are done solely via Paylater’s mobile application which is currently available on Google Playstore. With Paylater, you can borrow money from 5 cedis and above depending on how you have been able to pay the previous loan you took and the availability of funds at the time. Also, there are no late payment fees with Pay later or Carbon. It’s just your loan amount plus interest.

Nigerian digital financial platform, Carbon (formerly Paylater) is taking big steps to introduce its revamped financial services into Ghana. The online lender is looking to hire a new country manager for Ghana and this suggests the company is looking to introduce its new services like PayVest into Ghana.

Carbon belives that access to credit and quality financial services is a human right. Its mission is to empower all people with the financial access they need to pursue a life of dignity and prosperity. The FinTech empowers individuals with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities, and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. Interest ranges from 1.75% – 30%, with an equivalent monthly interest rate of 1 – 21%. The Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on a Carbon loan ranges from 23 – 60.8%. The company recently launched its services in Kenya and is expanding its footprint to additional African countries.

People can send you money via debit cards, USSD or bank transfers from financial institutions including GTBank, Access Bank, First Bank, and Zenith Bank.

While CGAP could not confirm the profiles of borrowers in Ghana, experience in East Africa suggests that many are borrowing from formal lenders for the first time. JUMO, one of Ghana’s most successful digital lenders, also operates in Tanzania, where it found that 81 percent of its borrowers had never before borrowed from a formal financial institution. The ability to reach excluded customers and help them to build formal credit histories has always been touted as the promise of digital credit. And while more data are necessary before forming any conclusions about the potential impact of digital loans in West Africa, the results from Ghana are cause for optimism.

With Carbon, all loan requests, processes and payments are done via their android platform mobile app.You can borrow from as low as 5 cedis to as high as 1,000 cedis without the need to provide a collateral.All that is required of you as a loan applicant is your bio-data, your photograph, information about your employment and the loan amount you want.Once your loan has been reviewed and you pass the review process, your money is sent via the mobile wallet you applied with.

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Fido LoansFido money lending is our second money lending app here. Fido loans is a licensed institution, specialised in giving short term loans.Fido gives loans up to the sum of 200 cedis on first time applications.Based on how soon and how well someone pays for their loans, they can qualify for loans up to the sum of 600 cedis.You can download the Fido app from google play store and apply for your first ever Fido loan.Loans are usually paid into the mobile money accounts of applicants.Orbit Lending GhOrbit Lending is one of the fastest growing online loan companies in Ghana.