Y Combinator neobank Djamo raises $17M with 1M users across Francophone Africa

Summary

Djamo is one of several digital banking startups targeting Africa’s underbanked. But unlike many that focus on large markets like Nigeria, Egypt, or South Africa, Djamo has carved out a niche in Francophone West Africa, specifically the Ivory Coast and, more recently, Senegal. It now serves over one million customers across both countries. The Y Combinator-backed fintech just raised $17 million to expand its product suite for these retail customers and the thousands of small businesses it has onboarded in the last two years. The equity round, the largest ever for an Ivorian startup, surpasses Djamo’s $14 million Series A in 2022 and reflects continued investor confidence in its mission to make banking accessible and affordable. Co-founder and CEO Hassan Bourgi declined to share the new valuation but said it has doubled since the last raise. Bourgi founded Djamo with chief product and technical officer Régis Bamba in 2020 to close the financial access gap in French-speaking African countries, where few adults have bank accounts. Traditional banks in the region often cater to the affluent, leaving most of the population reliant on mobile money, a cheaper method that includes using phone numbers to make financial transactions. Mobile money has been instrumental in expanding financial access across Africa. As of 2022, 28% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa had a mobile money account, per the World Bank, and the region holds more than half of the world’s total. But that progress has also created a ceiling. Most mobile money platforms offer basic services: cash-in, cash-out, P2P transfers, and bill payments. While useful, they don’t unlock more advanced financial tools like credit, investments, or long-term savings. Djamo is positioning itself between mobile money and traditional banking. The startup offers the accessibility of mobile money with the financial depth of a bank account, a similar playbook that Softbank-backed OPay and Transsion-owned PalmPay have used to scale ...