Anchor Joins Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 Batch

Nigerian start-up Anchor has been accepted into Y Combinator Summer 2022. It is the first African banking-as-a-service (BaaS) BaaS and embedded finance platform to be accepted into the programme.

Founded seven months by Segun Adeyemi, Olamide Sobowale and Gbekeloluwa Olufotebi, Anchor provides APIs, dashboards, and tools to help developers embed and build banking products.

The company also announced it has raised over $1 million in pre-seed funding from Byld Ventures, Y Combinator, Luno Expeditions, Niche Capital, Mountain Peak Capital, and a host of angel investors including Emmanuel Okeleji (CEO, SeamlessHR), Ado Oseragbaje, Yinka Odeleye, and Sanmi Famuyide.

It said the fund will be used to improve its technology stack, increase its talent base, invest in compliance and regulatory infrastructure, and acquire customers, the startup claims.

“We built Anchor to abstract away the complexities in building financial products, so businesses can get started in five minutes with a few lines of code”, said Anchor’s CEO, Segun Adeyemi.

“Anchor’s embedded finance platform enables technology companies in Africa to build products that can rapidly expand access and improve the quality of financial services. We’re excited to back Segun, Olamide, and Gbeke – a highly technical and experienced team – in building financial infrastructure that’s essential for Africa’s economic growth,” Ashutosh Desai, a Partner at Y Combinator said.

Founder of Byld Ventures, Youcef Oudjidane: “I believe BaaS will play a prominent role in the distribution of financial services in Africa. As a full stack baas provider, Anchor demarcates customer engagement from infrastructure – enabling its customers to focus on building differentiation as opposed to commodity infrastructure. We are really excited to be working with this determined and experienced team”

Anchor also revealed that it is launching its public beta API infrastructure to make it easier for African businesses to build, embed and launch financial products, starting in its first market, Nigeria.