Sudan: FinTech Bloom raises $6.5M SEED

Sudan-based Financial Technology company Bloom has raised $6.5M in its SEED round backed by Visa, Y Combinator, Global Founders Capital (GFC), Goodwater Capital, UAE-based Early-Stage firm VentureSouq, and several angel investors. Ahmed Ismail and other co-founders Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan and Abdigani Diriye launched the FinTech startup to help Sudanese individuals hedge against this rising devaluation.

Bloom offers fee-free accounts for users to save in dollars and buy and spend in Sudanese pounds. It also provides local and dollar cards and a feature where they can receive remittance free of charge from several countries globally, mainly where most of the Sudanese diaspora reside. The Fintech works with the Export Development Bank, a partner bank that handles deposits.

Continuing the pace it established in Q1 2022, FinTech continues to be the leading industry across EVMs, as seen in our FREE State of Startup Funding – H1 2022 Emerging Venture Markets Report. The industry aggregated $1.5Bn+ in H12022 across EVMs recording an increase of over 200% in terms of funding compared to H1 2021. Tech startups continue to disrupt the sector to offer alternative payment solutions, payment systems for dine-in, digital banking apps, and cryptocurrency exchange platforms. While Fintech had the most amount of Mega-Deals in H1, the sector has also recorded healthy dynamics in Early-Stage deals especially the SEED stage with sizable funds being raised by the likes of Kenya-based Dash($32.8M), UAE’s Dine-in payment disruptor Qlub ($17M), and Pakistan-based Digital Wallet NayaPay ($13M). As evident in this round, the FinTech venture space has garnered significant traction from notable regional and international investors.

The investment from Visa came as one of the incentives for Bloom’s participation in the global card scheme’s Fintech Fast Track Program. Bloom switched its cards from Mastercard to Visa. “The Visa investment is critical for companies like us for a couple of reasons. One, aligning with Visa as a partner gives you a bunch of benefits, launching products faster, marketing support and product support; and two, in addition to the investment, Visa Fintech Fast Track enables you to access these incentives in a streamlined way,” CEO Ahmed Ismail told TechCrunch in an interview.

Executives at Bloom and Visa say this investment and partnership can exponentially drive the adoption of Visa cards in Sudan and East Africa. Ahmed Mohey, Visa country general manager for Sudan and Libya commented, “Together with Bloom, we will continue to drive acceptance of digital payments while finding opportunities to launch new products and services to Sudanese customers and merchants”. Roel Janssen, a partner at Global Founders Capital, shares similar sentiment about the team: “We are very excited by our investment in Bloom. Its experienced and talented founding team has the drive and expertise to build a product that is universally valued by consumers, partners and regulators in Sudan and the wider East Africa region.”

Bloom’s founders say this SEED round will help the startup execute its expansion plan across the Anglo-East African region such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. “Our product is live in Sudan. The plan is to scale in the country and then expand to other markets,” Ismail concluded. “We anticipate being in at least one market before the end of the year and a couple more early next year.”