A Nigerian fintech startup offering digital payment services to providers of solar energy, Infibranches Technologies Limited, has announced a $2 million Series A funding deal with All On. All On is an independent impact investment company focused on increasing access to commercial energy products and services for underserved and unserved off-grid energy communities in Nigeria. They are backed by oil and gas giant, Shell.
Founded in 2019, Infibranches is the company behind Green Energy Plug, a platform that provides various digital financial services to renewable energy companies, especially those with large distribution networks. Infibranches is the brainchild of Olusola Owoyemi. They cater to agent banking businesses through what they call Omnibranches, helping them provide cash withdrawals and payments, utility and payments, money transfers, etc. Omnibranches has served over a million customers.
Infibranches are currently the only company in the fintech space that has built a secure platform serving as a single API for payments and other financial services for service providers in the Nigerian renewable energy sector. “Through this investment, Infibranches plans to speed up customer acquisition in its current markets,” said Owoyemi, Infibranches CEO. “This will also improve existing products like Omnibranches, which has served over a million customers and introduce new products and services to address energy distribution issues.”
Infibranches has been able to reach over a million customers and features agent hierarchy management, commission tracking, transaction records, transaction analytics, and profile management. The All On investment will facilitate the company’s mission to bridge the energy distribution gap in underserved rural and peri-urban areas of Nigeria.
According to a joint statement released by Infibranches and All One, this funding from All One will “trigger the next phase of Infibranches’ growth by financing inventory and agent acquisition, product and technology development as well as providing working capital for business operations geared towards the distribution of Solar Home Systems for users across the country.”
“We are particularly thrilled about this deal because it’s an innovative business model that solves the payments and collections problems that solar system distributors and mini-grid developers face across Nigeria,” said Dr Wiebe Boer, CEO of All On. “This partnership merges fintech and renewables in a way we haven’t seen in Nigeria before and will enable tens of thousands of new electricity connections.”
Infibranches intends to use the funding to scale talent acquisition as well as for product and technology development. They are also looking at providing capital for business operations.
Owoyemi states that other things the company will do include “speed up its customer acquisition in current markets, improve existing products like Omnibranches, and introduce new products and services aimed at fixing energy distribution issues in the country” – specifically the Niger Delta region. Infibranches is backed by The Nigerian Off-Grid Market Acceleration Programme (NoMAP), a non-profit initiative supported by USAID and the UK.
