Kuunda, a fintech that provides digital lending infrastructure to banks and other financial services providers, has completed a $5 million secondary share sale.
The transaction is the second secondary sale the startup has completed since its launch in 2018, CEO Andrew Milne told Condia.
The first secondary sale took place as Kuunda prepared to raise its pre-Series A round. Announced in 2025, the round brought in $7.5 million after the company initially set out to raise $3 million.
The oversubscribed round also included $2.2 million allocated to secondary share sales, allowing some early investors to realise returns alongside the company’s fundraising.
According to Milne, the latest transaction was designed to provide liquidity to some of Kuunda’s earliest backers, including angel investors.
It also consolidated the company’s shareholder base, reducing the number of investors on its cap table from 12 at the time of its last fundraise to four.
“This is an important milestone for Kuunda and our investors. Delivering a successful secondary at this stage reflects the strength of the business we’ve built,” Milne said.
Angel investors who sold their shares recorded annualised internal rates of return (IRR) of more than 70%, while seed investors achieved annualised IRRs of between 25% and 40%.
Existing investors Accion Ventures, Portugal Gateway Fund and Seedstars Africa Ventures increased their positions in the company through the transaction, which was led by E4E Africa.
“We are excited to expand our position in Kuunda through this transaction. Kuunda is an exceptional company, using technology, distribution and banking partnerships to deliver essential financial services where traditional institutions can’t reach — building a very healthy and fast-growing business while offering much needed products at fair prices to African small businesses and consumers,” Bas Hochstenbach, Managing Partner at E4E Africa, said.
Building lending infrastructure for underserved businesses
Founded in 2018, Kuunda provides digital lending-as-a-service infrastructure that enables banks, mobile money operators and other financial services providers to offer credit through their existing platforms.
Rather than operating primarily as a direct lender, the company works with partners that already have established customer relationships and distribution networks, helping them design, deploy and manage digital credit products.
Its model addresses a liquidity problem faced by mobile money agents and small businesses across emerging markets. Agents need sufficient electronic float to facilitate customer transactions, while micro-merchants often need working capital to purchase inventory and maintain their operations.
When that liquidity is unavailable, agents can lose transactions and commissions, while merchants may struggle to meet customer demand.
Kuunda uses transaction and behavioural data to assess borrowers’ financing needs and creditworthiness, enabling partners to offer credit tailored to how their customers operate. Its technology supports the lending process, from credit profiling and loan delivery to reporting and reconciliation, while its partnerships connect distributors with financial institutions that can provide lending capital.
The company has built two main product lines around these needs. Hapa Cash provides short-term, real-time liquidity to mobile money agents and consumers, including e-float financing, airtime purchases and other transaction-related advances.
Kazi Cash, launched to address businesses’ longer-term financing needs, offers growth financing for micro-merchants and agents, including stock financing, term loans and merchant cash advances.
The approach allows Kuunda to expand lending through existing distribution networks rather than building a consumer-facing business from scratch in every market. It also gives partner institutions a way to extend credit to customers whose financing needs may not be adequately served by conventional lending products.
Since closing its $7.5 million pre-Series A round in 2025, Kuunda has expanded its bank partnerships from six to 16, while its customer base has grown from 2.6 million to nearly four million, Milne said.
The company has now disbursed more than 870 million loans, valued at over $4.4 billion, since inception. As Kuunda expands its distribution network and reaches more borrowers, Milne says the availability of capital to fund loans through its partners is becoming a more pressing constraint.
“We’ve hit such a rate of scale that our biggest constraint to future growth is capital access for our partners.”