Paytech Dash lands $32.8m seed round to unify Africa’s mobile money wallets

Ghanaian payments app Dash has landed a $32.8 million seed funding round, which it claims is one of the largest seed rounds for an African tech start-up.

Dash founder and CEO Prince Boakye Boampong

The oversubscribed round was led by venture capital firm Insight Venture Partners and saw participation from Global Founders Capital, 4DX Ventures, ASK Capital, Techstars and Zinal Growth Partners.

Notable individual investors include Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau, the founders of German fintech Moss and the founders of French financial management fintech PennyLane.

Launched in 2020 by Prince Boakye Boampong, Dash is an alternative payment network for the 1.3 billion Africans currently transacting digitally. The firm aims to provide a single, unified payment network to facilitate the processing of transactions for consumers and businesses and connect the approximately 200 mobile money wallets found across Africa.

“We are committed to unifying the financial sector in Africa and leveraging its current technological revolution as more than 400 million smartphones and 548 million mobile money users circulate within the continent,” Boampong says.

“Dash will provide a singular solution for all our users, individuals, merchants and banks.”

Dash currently operates in Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria and has processed around $1 billion in customer transactions.

In January 2022 alone, Dash reported a Total Processed Volume (TPV) of more than $300 million, up three times on a monthly basis from Q4 2021.

The company says the cash will be spent on expanding its workforce, developing new features and expanding throughout key markets across Africa.