YEP is a Nigerian founded digital bank and the company raised $1.5million pre-seed

Banking is one of the largest businesses in Nigeria, it involves some set of people or merchants that helps with transfers, loans, savings, and Yep digital bank is fighting for market share.

Olaoluwa Awojoodu, founder of E-settlement, a company for different financial entities. E-settlement agent and banking platform “Paycentre Africa“ which is currently in Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Togo.

The company announced last year that it had over 5million customers transactions and more than $2billion from its network of about 100,000 merchants.

Awojoodu teamed up with Airende Ojeomogha and Garry Ottosen to start Yep!, a neo bank that will influence the E-Settlement network and modify these underbanked customers online as well as target those online already.

Yep digital bank, a financial app with banking features announced that they made their $1.5 million in a pre-seed round led by pan-African VC Greenhouse Capital. 

They plan to go above the 5 markets where E-settlement is at the moment, rendering digital financial services to customers.

“We want to bank the guys in Lagos as well as bank the guys in a village at Ikot Ekpene. And at the same time, not just Nigeria, we are also looking at a full African play,” said co-founder and CEO Awojoodu.

Over 42 million adults who live in rural areas lack basic banking services in Nigeria. 

With the YEP app, agents can now offer cash in, cash out, digital accounts, cash issuance, and bill payments, this is something they couldn't achieve with E-settlement.

“We can now start banking consumers because we now hold their money, and we can also bank our agents. So we kind of closed all the ecosystems, bringing agents and merchants, businesses and consumers all in one ecosystem,” said Ojeomogha.

Ojeomogha has experience as an investment banker and has worked for fintech companies like Oxygen and Tally in the U.S. His friend Osotten also built lending programs, including consumer and business credit cards and small business installment loans for several U.S. banks.

Yep! currently has a $500,000 credit capability to kick-start working capital loans to its merchants. The founders say they are discussing with international credit providers to increase this to $10 million by the end of 2022.