South African fintech Ukheshe Technologies will seek to raise up to $100m for acquisitions in the next 12 months, CEO Clayton Hayward tells The Africa Report.
The funding sought will be a combination of debt and equity. “There is always going to be consolidation in the industry” and Ukheshe wants to be involved, Hayward says in Johannesburg. A current funding round, which is seeking to raise $30m-$40m for current organic growth plans, will close in about eight weeks, Hayward says.
Ukheshe uses a cloud-based Application Programming Interface (API), which employs artificial intelligence to provide back-end capability for financial-services providers. The solution is used in areas such as customer onboarding, digital payments, card provision and cryptocurrencies. Haywood says the company’s niche is [in offering] “fintech as a service.”