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Nigerian-based fintech, Grey, with a recent name change from Aboki Africa, has announced its acceptance into Y Combinator’s 2022 Winter batch for startups.
Asides the name change, Grey recently raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Ingressive Capital and Abdul Hassan, co-founder and CEO of Mono and other investors. The startup is actively extending its reach and impact beyond the country.
Grey was founded in 2020 by Idorenyin Obong and Femi Aghedo to tackle the problem which exists in the exchange of foreign currencies in domiciliary accounts to local currency for Nigerians.
Before founding Grey, Obong has garnered experience from international companies where he worked remotely for most of his career and frequently received a constant flow of dollars into his domiciliary accounts.
During withdrawals, he faced exchange challenges. He had to go to the bank, withdraw cash and meet a BDC operator who would travel long distances for one transaction. Hence, the reason for Grey.
Grey has grown to transact a net worth of $1,000,000 month-on-month. The company takes a 1% transaction fee capped at N3,000 (~$6) and affirms that from December 2021 to January 2022, its monthly users increased by 36% to 12,000 while revenue went up by 64%.
The provision of virtual foreign bank accounts has become a common strategy for fintechs trying to help Nigerians and Africans facilitate international transfers. Some other startups offering similar services include Techstars-backed PayDay and Fincra.
Grey Finance is one of the many African startups to have gotten into YC W22, which is set to be the largest batch for African startups yet. Grey’s next goal lies in attending to multiple requests from users who want to use mobile apps rather than the platform’s predominant web interface as well as launch virtual and physical foreign-denominated cards.
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