Fintech firm Bamboo allowing Nigerians buy U.S. securities raises $15 million

Nigerian fintech start-up Bamboo won $15 million in its first capital raise after its push to court investors’ support for a platform giving Nigerians access to trade in U.S. stocks from home culminated in Greycroft Partners and Tiger Global Management uniting to provide the cash, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Bamboo runs an app with a gateway to trading in more than 3,000 stocks in the United States, according to its landing page, and has the ambition of committing the Series A fund to extend reach in markets as far-flung as Kenya, South Africa and Ghana across the continent.

Bamboo already has 300,000 users in Nigeria, the media outlet said, quoting Richmond Bassey, the founder, with over 50,000 already enrolled for its services in Ghana.

“Our goal is simple: we want to give Africans and their asset managers easy, fast and secure access to global investment options that will allow them to earn real returns,” Mr Bassey added.

Nigeria’s fintech space has never been more promising, given the vast embrace of digitalisation by its enterprising and technology savvy youth population, said by the World Bank to account for 74 per cent of the global population of young people by 2035 alongside those of nine other countries.

And the issuing in December of permits to telco powerhouse MTN and Mafab Communications to run 5G spectrum services is on track to set Africa’s largest economy on the cutting edge of modern connectivity on the continent.

Added to Greycroft, investment firms like Michael Seibel of Y-Combinator, Chrysalis Capital, Saison Capital and Motley Fool Ventures have ploughed cash into Bamboo.

Alison Lange Engel, a partner at New-York based Greycroft, said in a statement his firm is “thrilled to support the innovative, user-first approach the Bamboo team is bringing to market,”

Bamboo is in talks with watchdogs for approval for its users to transact across various stock exchanges in Africa while the move to enable Africans in diaspora to trade in securities on the continent is in the pipeline.