OnePipe, a Nigerian fintech in API aggregation, has announced the raise of $3.5 million in seed funding. The investment round was co-led by Atlantica Ventures, Tribe Capital, and V&R Associates; with participation from Canaan Partners, Saison Capital, Norrsken, The Fund, and Two Culture Cap. Existing investors like Chris Adelsbach, Techstars, Ingressive Capital, Acquity also participated in the round. Meanwhile, alongside them were P1, Raba, and DFS Lab and a few angel investors.
The fintech plans to use the raised capital to revamp its product offerings. They wish to hire new talent and expand strategically into new African markets. In the 10 months since OnePipe’s partnership with businesses to drive embedded financial services, the startup has successfully processed over 6.3 million transactions valued at over US$46.3million from close to 140 businesses. OnePipe has also issued around one million individual accounts. By running API infrastructure on behalf of these partner banks and helping them monetize it, OnePipe works with non-financial institutions. It is to launch and cross-sell an array of financial services such as credit, accounts and payments within their offerings.

What brought about OnePipe?
OnePipe’s original approach was to create an API gateway. They connect banks and fintech under a uniform standard, a move designed to allow the company to perform Open Banking. According to OnePipe’s CEO and founder, Ope Adeoye, it became explicit upon continuous integration with financial institutions that OnePipe needed to pivot since it wasn’t generating many demand cycles. Having struck partnerships with a few banks, OnePipe decided to take a step back and delve into the world of embedded finance.
“As businesses offer these financial services to customers who have trusted them over the years, these businesses drive stickiness. Meanwhile, their customers enjoy bespoke services from an entity who has a deep and familiar understanding of their financial needs. Essentially, OnePipe’s infrastructure drives a win-win relationship for the business, their customers and the financial institutions who have chosen to join the movement,” says Ope.

Investment on OnePipe
Speaking on the investment, Atlantica Ventures founding partner Aniko Szigetvari said, “OnePipe is deepening financial inclusion in the continent by extending financial services to currently informal, unbanked and underbanked businesses. In our view, embedded finance is the next enabler for traditional and financial service businesses to increase customer loyalty/revenue. This is done by offering a wide range of third-party financial products and revenue streams for their customers.”
Launched in 2019, OnePipe has integrated the services of several banks and financial service providers into one unified API, then offering it to businesses and startups as a way to make it easy to launch their financial service and scale distribution for the suppliers. Fintech helps organisations embed financial services like accounts, improved payments and credit within their products. For businesses, OnePipe helps with One API, multiple providers, multiple services, robust business intelligence; also, a growing catalogue of available partners and capabilities and increasing their reach.