Homegrown Visa & Mastercard alternative in Zambia🇿🇲; Less than 2 years after launching, Terra’s UST is now the third-largest stablecoin 🤯; BNPL is picking up speed in the B2B space too 📈

Good Morning FinTech, 19 April

Good morning Everyone,

And happy Tuesday! Hope you had a wonderful Easter celebration 🍾 Relaxed and full of eggs, it’s a perfect time to dive into 3 great FinTech stories of the new week. And trust me, they are really interesting:

Homegrown Visa & Mastercard alternative in Zambia🇿🇲

The funding 💸 Zambia-based card issuing FinTech startup, Union54, has announced it raised $12M in a seed extension round led by Tiger Global, with the participation of Earl Grey Capital, and Vibe VC, among others.

The seed extension follows the company’s previous seed round funding of $3M, led by the same global investor Tiger Global.

The USP 🥊 Union54’s API allows software companies from the African continent to issue and manage their debit cards without requiring a bank or a third-party processor, hence enabling cross-border payments and easing the overall process. 

The numbers 📊 Since its launch in October Union54 has grown to issue slightly over half a million virtual debit cards to its customers. The company also claims to have been growing revenues subsequently 50% month-on-month since November last year.

But that’s not the most interesting part. The interesting thing here is that this FinTech is trying to create a homegrown alternative to worldwide giants Mastercard & Visa. Here’s the takeaway: