Lipa Later gains $12m funding to expand credit footprint in Africa

Odyssey Capital’s flexible payment fintech start-up Lipa Later closed a $12 million pre-Series A funding round that will help it expand its service into new African markets. Greenhouse Capital, Cauris Finance, Lateral Frontiers and Sayani Investments were among the participants in the equity and debt financing stage.

Lipa Later is a buy-now-pay-later product that operates in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Nigeria

The planned expansion will see the start-up compete with similar South African products like Payflex and PayJustNow. Lipa Later leverages exclusive partnerships with retailers to offer consumers flexible payment options for purchases made at these retailers.

Where it sets itself apart from its competitors is a proprietary credit scoring engine that uses machine learning to speed up the credit access process. This allows customers to sign up through the Lipa Later API on the retailer website and have almost instant access to the credit facility along with a full breakdown of the repayment options.

This streamlined sign-up process and partnerships with retailers like Carrefour has allowed Lipa Later to gain a competitive edge against other Kenyan short term credit offerings like Flexpay Technologies and Miti.

Read more: Payment company Zip to acquire Johannesburg fintech Payflex

Featured image supplied by Lipa Later