We are excited to announce that Kappa has closed a $5 million Seed round led by Morningside, bringing total funding to date to $8.6 million.

African businesses import $600 billion worth of goods and services per year, but paying their suppliers abroad remains a massive challenge. Importers on the continent are stuck with two bad options today — international wires and intermediaries in the parallel markets. International wires are slow, expensive and come with unpredictable settlement times, while intermediaries in the parallel markets are unlicensed, pose significant settlement risk, and lack sufficient liquidity to meet demand. We have seen first hand the huge challenges this creates for businesses in managing their cash position and inventory. This is one of the biggest impediments to growth for local economies. Kappa’s mission is to break down these barriers which have held back African businesses for decades.

We started onboarding select customers in private beta in Cameroon six months ago and have seen a substantial surge in demand since then. To date, we have processed over $15 million worth of transactions for these early customers, helping businesses across all sectors pay their suppliers locally and abroad — from the US and EU to China and South-East Asia. Today, businesses and individuals in Cameroon and the CEMAC region can use Kappa to send money to 38 countries in 14 currencies — with guaranteed same or next day settlement and significantly larger transaction sizes than any other solution on the market. We are rapidly expanding the number of corridors and scaling up transaction volume in the months ahead.

With this new funding round, we are working to roll out Kappa across the continent, starting in West Africa, and to continue to improve our product offering across all dimensions — faster settlement times, better rates, deeper liquidity, and more corridors. Morningside has been our partner since day one, supporting us as we built the business from the ground up. We’re incredibly excited to have them on board again for this next stage of our journey.

Serving importers in Africa and across the globe offers a unique opportunity to both build a large business and to have a positive impact on millions of lives. If this excites you and you like working on hard technical and operational problems, we’re hiring!