Nigerian-based Sudo Africa raises $3.7 million in pre-seed funding

Sudo Africa, a fintech company in Nigeria that offers a card-issuing API to developers and enterprises, has acquired $3.7 million in pre-seed capital.

Global Founders Capital (GFC), based in San Francisco, led the financing. Picus Capital, LoftyInc Capital, Rallycap Ventures, Kepple Africa, Berrywood Capital, ZedCrest, and Suya Ventures are among the investors.

Several African fintech entrepreneurs, like Olugbenga 'GB' Agboola, Ham Serunjogi, and Odun Eweniyi, are also investors.

Card-issuing API (pioneered by the likes of Rapyd, Ayden, and even Stripe worldwide) is gradually attracting the attention of investors who believe it's the next big thing in a sector that has drawn the most VC funds in Africa, similar to many other API-led fintechs.

Aminu Bakori and Kabir Shittu launched the company in 2020 as a card issuing API fintech.

One of the main qualities of Sudo Africa is that it takes less time to issue cards, according to its founders.  The company's infrastructure enables it, as well as any developers or merchants who use its platform, not only to issue physical and virtual cards to their customer base, but also to regulate and program the issued cards to meet their tastes, desires, and to function exactly how they want.

This means that if a business decides to use Sudo to issue cards to their customers, they may manage how the cards are used by employees, staff, or associates, even if they aren't using the cards themselves. Every time a Sudo card is used, an API is called to determine if the transaction should be approved or denied in real time.

According to the founders, the idea to create Sudo sprang from a difficulty they encountered while trying to issue cards at their former startup: a mobile wallet system that allowed users to merge several financial institutions into a single platform and conduct transactions.

“At some point, we wanted to issue cards and worked with one of the local banks in Nigeria,” said CEO Bakori. “They got to print up to 1,000 cards, but it took a lot of time and none of them functioned because the bank wasn’t able to provide any APIs for us to either manage the cards or even control the usage of those cards. That was the first time we came around, thinking about how to issue cards.”

According to Bakori, the fintech landscape is one in which, while entrepreneurs build compartmentalized interfaces that allow their clients to send and receive payments between themselves, problems develop when global financial systems are involved.

Using a mobile wallet or local card in Nigeria to make an Amazon purchase, for example, is always a nightmare. This has become less of an issue with the advent of virtual dollar cards only used by a few fintech companies. This technology is powered by card-issuing API fintechs like Kaduna-based Sudo Africa.