The Cauridor Team. Image Credits: Cauridor
Ivory Coast-based Fintech startup, Cauridor, has closed its seed funding round with $3.5 million in seed funding. The funding round saw participation from pan-African venture capital firm Oui Capital, Rally Cap, BKR Capital, and several angel investors. Cauridor will channel this funding towards enhancing its payment infrastructure, as a means of addressing long-standing inefficiencies in Africa’s cross-border payment ecosystem.
Guinean entrepreneurs, Oumar Rafiou Barry and Abdoulaye Bah, founded the company in 2022. While studying in Canada, the duo were exposed to the rigours and frustration of sending money back home. This drove them, in 2019, to launch a consumer-focused platform that enabled seamless money transfers from Canada to Africa, dubbed BNB CashApp. However, they acknowledged broader issues with the Francophone African payment system. They decided, in 2022, create a more comprehensive solution, one created under the Cauridor brand.
Cauridor aims to ease cross-border transactions for merchants, banks, telecom operators, and money transfer companies in the untapped region of Francophone Africa. It has a network of over 25,000 agents across Guinea, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia that ease mobile wallet transactions, bank transfers, and cash pickups. These agents, typically small business owners with point-of-sale (POS) devices, are crucial in enabling deposits, withdrawals, and bill payments.
The decision to invest in Cauridor is informed by several insightful factors. Investors see potential in the startup’s efforts to build efficient payment infrastructure that can support both consumer and business transactions in Francophone Africa’s underdeveloped financial system.
Cauridor burgeoning revenue as a result of its business model holds great allure for investors. Transaction volumes rapidly climbed from $300 million in 2023 to $500 million in 2024. More than 90% of its revenue now comes from its payment infrastructure, showcasing its ability to monetize its network effectively. This growth trajectory, allnhy with its ability to secure high-profile clients like MoneyGram, makes it a viable candidate for investment.
Again, investors were attracted by the fact that Cauridor focuses on markets competitors fail to pay attention to, such as Guinea and Liberia, carving out a niche for itself in those regions. Additionally, its hands-on customer support model, which assists users in resolving issues such as incomplete KYC verification, has helped retain customers and build trust.
Cauridor’s strategic partnerships further strengthens its growth prospects. The startup has forged group-level contracts with global remittance firms like Ria, MoneyGram, and Western Union while forging telecom partnerships with Orange and MTN. These alliances enhance its ability to scale rapidly and offer competitive forex margins, which have been instrumental in attracting and retaining customers.
The newly secured capital will be used to drive expansion into new markets, with offices in Mali and Nigeria set to open later this year. The company also seeks to enhance its technological capabilities by integrating blockchain-based solutions to streamline settlements and capitalize on the increasing adoption of stablecoins for cross-border transactions.
