Moni Africa, a Nigerian fintech startup, has rebranded as Rank to enhance its mission to support small businesses in Africa. As part of the development, the YC-backed startup has also acquired AjoMoney, a digital group-savings platform, and Zazzau Microfinance Bank.
Moni Africa understands that the greatest struggle of most businesses at launch is working capital. With this, the startup has provided funds to offer low-interest loans to communities of mobile money agents through a referral-and-trust-vetting system.
The startup’s group savings solution, which centres around trusted networks such as traders’ associations and cooperatives, continues to propel its financing solutions for African small businesses. In that, a recent pilot phase with 10,000 users delivered a disbursement of N16 billion, backed by treasury bills and money markets with returns of 23%.
Now, Moni Africa is taking the mission a step further with its rebranding to Rank. In addition to this, the startup acquired AjoMoney and Zazzau Microfinance Bank, which is now renamed Rank Microfinance Bank. The moves will deepen the company’s product offering, which includes deposits, credit and treasury-backed savings.
While Moni is primarily built on the Ajo, Esusu and Adashe traditional saving schemes, it seeks to blend digitised trust networks with licensed banking infrastructure for wealth-building circles. The startup is also building a team that combines experts in wealth advisors with digital tools that provide users with insights into their wealth journey.
Moni Africa, now Rank, has raised $4 million from Y Combinator, 186 Ventures, Magic Fund, Predictive VC, Uncovered Fund, and others to transform the financial landscape of over 500 million underbanked consumers, merchants, and mobile money agents in Africa. It recorded a 20% month-on-month growth between 2021 and 2023 along its mission.
Moni Africa’s Evolution
Founded in August 2021 by Femi Iromini and Adedapo Sobayo, Moni Africa initially focused on providing community-powered working capital and loans for mobile money agents and Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria. After a short spell, the startup expanded to the country’s next-door neighbour Benin Republic and Guinea.
The founders first helped to create the Shapati Fund Support Group before providing the funds to mobile money agents in the group.
"We got trust from them (the mobile agents). We provided loans (funding) to them at a critical time, December, with all the money needed around it. The group paid back on time. That was the turning point for us."
"Creating Moni wasn’t really like an opportunity we saw. It was an opportunity we stumbled on and we tried our best to make something out of it," Femi Iromini told Technext in 2022.
Since then, Moni has been providing financial support to more African businesses and also filling credit gaps by popularising community finance.