Africa-focused GP leads Series B for Singapore's Thunes

GGV Capital, which led a $10 million Series A last year, also took part, as did French technology advisory Future Shape and UK enterprise technology provider Checkout.com. The plan is to expand the company's B2B cross-border payments operations across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Thunes’ platform connects mobile wallet providers, banks, technology companies and money transfer operators, with a view to enabling seamless cross-border payments to and from emerging economies in a fast and secure manner. Its partner network is said to be the largest of its kind in emerging markets, encompassing more than 100 countries.

Africa, Latin America, and Asia are seen as Thunes’ largest growth opportunities due to their fragmented and complex payment ecosystems, which often leave consumers and businesses struggling with slow, costly, and unreliable ways of moving money. Cross-border payments volume in these markets is estimated to amount to some $45 trillion worth of transactions between five billion people and businesses. Thunes said it expects transaction volumes on its platform to double annually going forward.

“The African fintech space, and payments in particular, remains a key focus area for Helios and we continue to look for opportunities to back high-growth companies building key infrastructure for the financial ecosystem in Africa,” Tope Lawani, a co-founder and managing partner at Helios, said in a statement. “Thunes is a great example of a firm leading this.”

Led and predominantly staffed by African professionals, Helios is headquartered in London and maintains bases in Nigeria and Kenya, as well as France and Luxembourg. It claims to be the largest emerging markets-focused private equity firm globally with about $3.6 billion in funds under management and interests spanning 30 African countries.

Investor moves to bridge the start-up ecosystems of disparate emerging markets globally is considered a prospective but poorly validated scaling concept troubled by a lack of cultural overlap. Recent traction on this front includes Colombia’s Latin Leap raising a Southeast Asia fund, Chinese VC attempts to target Africa, and a tie-up between incubators in Southeast Asia and Mongolia.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Singapore
• Africa
• Latin America
• GGV Capital
• Financial Services