ThankUCash, a Nigerian company, has received $5.3 million to construct infrastructure for cashback, discounts, and BNPL services.
ThankUCash, a platform created by Connected Analytics in 2018, has thrived, demonstrating that the offers, coupon, and incentives industry is not all doom and gloom.
As a result, the business, which last year revealed an unnamed seven-figure seed, has now completed the round at $5.3 million.
The Lagos-based startup’s seed round was co-led by VC firms 500 Global and Unicorn Growth Capital. Expert Dojo, Predictive VC, SaaS Growth Ventures, Betatron Venture Group, and Accelerex Holdings were among the participants. Individual investors such as Andrew Dell, the former CEO of HSBC, and Craig Fenton, the UK director of Google, were also there.
Store-like companies in Nigeria, like groceries shops and restaurants, have functioned offline for years, depending on bookkeeping and brain work to keep track of their customers’ movements. Customers were unable to receive cashback or reward points as a result of this.
With this fund, ThankUCash plans to grow within Nigeria, where the startup has offices in Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja, as well as into Ghana and Kenya. It also intends to expand its product line and hire additional people.
Merchants can use virtual platforms like ThankUCash to get into rewards, which can enable them to retain customers and improve revenue.
Suraj Supekar, Madonna Ononobi, and Harshal Gandole, who serve as a chief technology officer, chief operating officer, and senior vice president of engineering, respectively, founded ThankUCash with CEO Simeon Ononobi
Users can win prizes whenever they spend with thousands of shops featured on the app’s multi-merchant rewards program. This means that they can bounce from one store to another to earn customer loyalty points in another.
After attracting the notice of accelerators such as 500 Companies, Google Launchpad, and other local investors such as Microtraction and Ventures Platform, the company secured a $320,000 pre-seed round.
ThankUCash claims to have over 600,000 users and 1,000 stores on its network thus far. It also professes to have handled more than $80 million in transactions
After growing as a company, Ononobi and his team want to embark on a more difficult task: creating infrastructure for businesses that wish to provide similar services.
According to Ononobi, the company is developing solutions to help SMEs prosper while also expanding consumer purchasing power and possibilities. It seeks to create rewards, loyalty, discounts, buy now, pay later, and cashback infrastructure.
He also highlighted that cashback was low-hanging fruit and an entry point for ThankUCash. It will continue to invest in offers, coupons, gift cards, purchase now, pay later, and anything else that will assist the firm to develop while also providing consumers with more purchasing options.
The technology is such that ThankUCash has machines in stores, according to the founder. Users can ask for loans, the company generates a code, which they enter into the POS system, and the merchant is promptly credited.
The code can only be used in the store selected and for the loan amount asked, ensuring that the consumer is buying directly from the merchants at the end of the day. He also hinted at the possibility of the firm offering buy now, pay later services in the future.
The consumer-facing platform of ThankUCash will continue to operate. However, in order to get the infrastructure in place, it has partnered with payments processor Interswitch to onboard its merchants.
A few bank collaborations are in the works, according to the startup, which is also in the process of integrating with payment gateways.
Merchants pay ThankUCash a charge on every transaction made in their stores, which is how the business generates income.
ThankUCash, for example, receives a 1.5 percent commission for each user who comes into the business through them and to redeem a 5% reward item.
The Lagos-based firm also charges commissions on deals and wants to charge a “substantial onboarding fee” to companies that wish to use its APIs for services like buy now, pay later.
ThankUCash has optimized the cashback offer, allowing shops to increase walk-in traffic. By employing ex-managers of DealDey, a Nigerian defunct deals startup, it’s enhancing the deals category and helps merchants to sell things quickly.
ThankUCash intends to introduce a fourth option shortly, a remittance product where merchants can sell directly to customers abroad, while it is also developing its buy now pay later infrastructure, which allows businesses to sell things notwithstanding of their customers have money or not.
This product’s details are kept under wraps by the CEO. Meanwhile, its investors, who have increased their stakes after learning of this, are excited about “the company’s future expansion,” according to Amit Bhatti, a principal at co-lead investor 500 Global.
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