Wave is the mobile-money provider, US and Senegal-based. The clients of the company could for free withdraw, deposit money, pay bills. Besides the app provides its clients with the opportunity to send money with only a 1% commission.
The new funding round was led by four companies. They are Sequoia Heritage, Founders Fund, Stripe, and Ribbit Capital. Among other investors were Partech Africa and the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. Wave has already had 300 million active clients in the region, it is one of the biggest alternative finance systems. However, Wave is going to increase its presence, as it now takes only not a big part of the overall niche.
In the beginning, Secondwave was founded in 2014 by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk in the USA. In 2018, the product was launched in Senegal and named Wave. The company’s technology differs from its rivals that entered the market many years ago. It provides its service not only to people with smartphones, but also those that are without also can use it with the help of a free QR-card. “We saw an opportunity to make a bigger impact by trying to build a better, much more affordable mobile money service than the telcos are building throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa” Durbin told.
