Union54 (Visit website)
Location: Zambia
Sector: Fintech
The African Fintech ecosystem is bringing a welcome disruption to access to financial services. Now, we can open a bank account in the comfort of our homes, boycotting endless queues. Lending solutions are removing barriers to accessing loans by individuals and businesses. International remittance and online payments involving foreign currency are becoming easier to achieve. All these are possible due to the solutions made by Africans and for Africans. Boldly, I promise you it will get better. It is public knowledge that Africans do the most. Also, we are always digging deep into our endless wells of ideas and working them into reality. One of them is getting our hands on Africa’s first card issuing API. Meaning, any African Fintech could bypass processor and bank stress to create programmable debit cards. The best part is the ability to edit the cards based on the business needs.

Zazu, MasterCard and Africa first card issuing API
Let us look at the startup doing all this work and even got themselves a MasterCard Principal membership. The first Zambian startup to get into YC, Union54!!! Drum rolls. The founders, Perseus Mlambo and his wife, Alessandra Martini, had a different product called Zazu.

Zazu, a challenger bank, was launched in 2015. It is the norm for banks to provide debit cards to their customers. Unfortunately, the infrastructure to produce the cards was not as efficient as the company required. Also, they reported a wait time of about 18 months to create cards for their customers. It seems very unlikely that any customer would remain patient for that long. The founders sought a solution to their business problem and decided to build their technology. Bypassing their local banks, they went directly to the company that provides the service to their local banks. Therefore, this is where MasterCard comes in.
Meeting with MasterCard
They met with MasterCard so that Zazu could become what is known as an ‘issuing bank.’ MasterCard then issued them a MasterCard Principal membership. Along the way, they thought to enable African Fintech access to their infrastructure. Starting with our financial institutions, they are developing Africa one API at a time.
How Union54 is bridging the gap in its industry

Union54 is solving a huge problem. It is worthy to note that the ’54’ in Union54 denotes the number of African countries. The startup is out to unite Africa after realising that we can achieve more by joining resources together. Okay, let us move on from the motivational speech. It is common to have African Fintechs with decorative virtual card features or physical cards that never get delivered. The service is not just as efficient as it could be.
With the gist from Zazu, we can see that the situation is out of their control. The API promises valuable and efficient service. This service includes ledger-based, acquirers/gateways, credit union, buy now, pay later, credit card management, and corporate cards to clientele. The startup also claims to save companies six months of development and thousands of dollars in setup fees with their APIs. Companies interested in integrating the API need to fill a form on the website to provide information on their business needs. Comprehensive guides and API technical documentation for integration are available to developers.
The Startup Investors
The startup is backed by YC and recently closed a $3 million seed funding round led by Tiger global. Other investors include Runa Capital, Ace & Company, Todd & Rahul Angel Fund, Vibe VC. Top angel investors like Babs Ogundeyi of Kuda and Gbenga Ajayi are in partnership with the startup. It seems like there is a lot of belief in this solution already. Also the founder, Mlambo: reported that the startup has the top 5% of Fintech startups on its clientele list. Although, Union54 is still in the beta phase with over 50 companies including, digital banks and post-Series A fintech companies. The startup is also partnering with Africa unicorn Flutterwave, Payday, Plumter, and Bitmama.
With Union54, fintech companies can issue physical or virtual cards at a cheaper and in less time. The startup reports four companies have started handing out virtual cards to their customers. More so, the reviews from these customers are impressive. Union54 already has the support of the fintech companies. With numerous accolades to their name, we can only expect their achievements to go higher from here on.