The Chief Executive Officer of OneFi, Chijioke Dozie has given reasons it secured $5million investment facility from Lendable, a technology-enabled funding provider to African consumer and SME lenders.
Dozie said the facility will allow the Fintech startup to double its size within Nigeria before entering new markets in 2019. Secondly, the debt facility will be used to deploy more loans to Paylater customers, specifically through a suite of innovative new products.
“Securing this investment from Lendable represents the first internationally-backed commercial debt transaction for us, marking an important stage of our company’s development as we look to serve the next billion,” Dozie was quoted to have said.
He added that the facility will allow OneFi to execute on a number of new products, including its partnership with Visa, whereby the company will be providing credit via QR codes at supermarkets, clinics and on public transport in H1 2019.
OneFi runs lending platform Paylater, which it rolled out in 2016. Since then it has deployed over US$60 million across 750,000 loans, approving over 1,500 loans a day with an average size of US$80.