Series B Announcement

We're excited to announce our Series B and welcome our new investors1, led by Spark Capital, to the Taptap team. They’re joined by previous leads Reid Hoffman and Canaan Partners among many others2.  Beyond this group’s successful track record, we’re particularly excited by their global reach -- from places as diverse as Nigeria, Jordan, and India -- and their commitment to helping individual diasporas send money home.

The $65M investment in Taptap Send will allow us to invest even more in the communities we serve, increasing the quality of service, improving speed while lowering cost, and helping our users with their financial needs, independent of borders. It also, of course, means that we’ll be able to scale even faster by opening new markets to bring instant, no fee, mobile transfers to those that benefit the most.  And in the process, accelerate the realization of the Sustainable Development Goal to reduce global inequality to which we’re committed. (See our previous post for more on our motivation for starting Taptap Send.)

Beyond global goals though, this venture is about people and communities and there’s nobody better to explain why we’re doing what we’re doing than the founding teams from the specific countries themselves:

Imaad Uddin (Bangladesh team)

I’m Imaad and I’m from East London. My parents arrived here during the second-wave of British-Bangladeshi migration to the UK in the 1990s, from our hometown of Bishwanath in Sylhet. I joined Taptap Send because I’ve seen at first hand the transformational impact that remittances can have on communities back home. My parents have been sending money back to our village for decades, supporting our extended family with school fees, medical bills, and even with emergency funds during the flooding that increasingly affects Eastern Bangladesh. For me, Taptap’s mission is both global and deeply personal: I love the scale of impact that our new investment allows around the world - and I also love that I’m doing work that directly impacts my uncles, aunts, and cousins.


Mawutor Abraham (Ghana team)

I left Ghana 17 years ago as an economic migrant.  The plan was to make money to send home whilst gaining the experience to eventually go back to help build the economy of Ghana.  When I found Taptap, I realized I had the opportunity to do that now and to build something to improve the lives of ‘my people’.  My people starts from my little family, my wider family, my village of Peki, my country of Ghana, my continent of Africa and my world of the world.  I’ve always helped my family by putting little sums of money -- less than £100 -- in the hands of about 10 people a month. But now in my role overseeing various African markets, I can help my cousins, my brothers and sisters, uncles, aunties and many more Ghanaians and Africans.  With this new funding, I’m excited to find new ways to move even more money from the west to Africa - and in my own little way to help build Africa.


Fatimatou Ousmanou (Cameroon team)

Mes parents ont quitté leur famille au Cameroun et sont venus en France faire leurs études au milieu des années 80. J'ai grandi en région parisienne dans une ville monde, cosmopolite, entourée de nombreuses diasporas africaines : sénégalaises, maliennes, congolaises, ivoiriennes… Toute ma vie, j'ai été témoin des valeurs de solidarité et de partage communes à toutes ces diasporas. Lorsque j’ai rejoint Taptap Send, mon mari et ma belle famille sénégalaises étaient déjà utilisateurs de l’application depuis plus d’un an. Aujourd’hui, c’est toute ma famille camerounaise, mes voisines congolaises, mes amies maliennes qui l’utilisent au quotidien.  

La diaspora est aujourd'hui le premier investisseur du continent et Taptap Send en facilitant le transfert d'argent, favorise ainsi directement l’inclusion financière des bénéficiaires en Afrique. Je suis donc particulièrement heureuse et fière de ce nouveau financement qui va nous aider à étendre notre champ d’action et me permettre à titre personnel de contribuer davantage au développement du continent africain.

  1. Alarko Capital, Esas Ventures, Finberg, First Minute Capital, FJ Labs, Patamar Capital, To.org and Unbound
  2. Breyer Capital, Crossbeam, Flourish Ventures, Helios Partners, Slow Ventures and Wamda