Published: March 5, 2025
The Nigerian startup Raenest, which recently closed its Series A round, seeks to eliminate payment delays for Africans working for foreign firms. It has found its footing.
The African gig economy is booming. With a sustained growth rate of 20% a year, it is enabling many people to work flexibly outside the strictures of traditional employment. By 2030, 80 million Africans could be working as independent contractors or freelancers, many of them with global tech firms or startups.
That’s great news for gig workers who are seeking remote work opportunities. But it can often lead to frustrations around getting paid. Foreign firms typically operate in different currencies and use incompatible payment platforms. Freelancers, then, often experience significant payment delays coupled with extortionate fees.
It's a situation that Victor Alade, co-founder and CEO of Raenest, knows only too well, having spent much of his own career as a freelancer.
“I would say getting paid was actually more challenging than the work itself,” he tells EMEA Finance. “There were times when the company would say, we can’t transfer money into your Nigerian bank accounts. Most of the time I’d have to wait for two to five days to receive my salary, and when I finally received it, I’d realise that close to 15% of my earnings had gone into the cross-border payment fee at an unfavourable exchange rate.”
During his time at the US-based company Andela, he realised his own situation wasn’t unusual. The company employs about 2,000 software engineers from different parts of Africa, many of whom were experiencing hold-ups in receiving their salary.
“I wanted to know, can we provide a means through which African gig workers can get paid in minutes and can receive the money in their local currency at a very good exchange rate?” says Alade.
Solving the payments problem
The result of his deliberations was Raenest, the fintech he co-founded with Sodruldeen Mustapha and Richard Oyom in 2022. Raenest is a multi-currency accounts platform for African freelancers and businesses. Rather than grappling with cross-border payments fees, users can set up virtual USD, GBP and EUR bank accounts. This enables them to receive international payments, send money worldwide, and convert currencies at competitive rates.
In the three years since it was founded, the fintech has amassed over 600,000 customers and processed over $1bn in payments. Although originally targeted at freelancers, it more recently made the jump to serving businesses too. Its 300 plus business clients have included MoniePoint, Talstack, Helium Health, Fez Delivery, Sunfi and Matta.
On 10 February, Raenest reached another major milestone with the close of its US$11mn Series A funding round, bringing its total venture funding to US$14.3mn. The round was led by QED Investors, a leading global fintech VC firm, with participation from Norrsken22 and follow-on investment from Ventures Platform, P1 Ventures, and Seedstars.
“The funding round was oversubscribed, but we’re so particular about the kind of investor we want,” says Alade. “It goes beyond money for us – we care about the vision, alignment and experience of those investors as well, and that’s why we specifically went for investors that we think will help us achieve our mission and catalyse our growth.”
Alade says that, since the outset, much of the company’s growth has come through word of mouth. In its first three months, it was able to onboard over 80,000 users without any advertising spend – something that, in his view, shows exactly how entrenched the payments problem has been. Since then, it has brought in a range of new features in response to users’ needs.
“Initially, we were just issuing US bank accounts, but after six months, we started issuing British and European bank accounts as well,” he recalls. “We also wanted to give users a way to spend, as well as just receiving oney, so we started issuing both virtual and physical USD cards that work anywhere. The platform also allows individuals to receive payments from Upwork, Fiverr and Gusto.”
Expansion plans