This is a good week for payments processors everywhere.

While Flutterwave has achieved a unicorn status in the market, South African Adumo has also raised a $15 million funding in its latest round.

For those that are not familiar, Adumo is a local payment start-up that hopes to help small and medium scale enterprises get better at handing electronic payments within the country. They have also worked with multinational brands to ensure seamless remittances from clients both home and abroad.

This latest funding was provided by the IFC which is a member of the World Bank Group. We expect that the capital injection will help Adumo expand to more than the 14 African countries where it now has a presence while also boosting the quality of its services across board.

In exchange for the funding, the IFC gets the same amount worth of preferred shares from the company.

The fact that the growth of the IFC’s investment is tied to the growth of the start-up means that they will also do all they can to ensure the payments processor only gets better.

As we emerge from the pandemic and business starts moving again, it is sure that more and more vendors, retailers and manufacturers would have more need for the services of Adumo.

Paystack might have made the news first on the back of its $200 million exit but that news is now eclipsed by another amazing one in the same space.

As of the time of this writing, Flutterwave has secured an additional $170M funding through a series C round. That is impressive, but not as impressive as the $1bn valuation that the company now boasts in the market.

A little background into Flutterwave shows that they are the company that processes a lot of payments across multiple African countries. In fact, their financial sheets show that they have processed about $9 billion in transactions so far, lending credence to the legitimacy of the business model.

The most interesting thing in this niche is how the brand is worth more than majority of Nigerian banks. At this valuation, they are also the first payment start-up in the country to achieve unicorn status – an unofficial badge given to companies that have crossed the $1bn mark.

There is stull more to do for Flutterwave as more ecommerce providers open up in the African space. Likewise, they are yet to expand to all African countries so some potential remains there. With an increase in purchase within and outside the continent too, we cannot wait to see where this business climbs to in the nearest future.

The coronavirus pandemic crippled a lot of businesses and brought economies to its knees.

In the midst of all that, though, emerged some start-ups determined to help their economies overcome this impact.

About last month, the iNOVO Accelerator program was born from the partnership between Ventures Platform, Startupbootcamp AfriTech and UK-Nigeria Tech Hub to help these start-ups to achieve their goals.

As of the time the accelerator program was announced, more than 750 worthy applicants submitted for consideration. Only ten would eventually be chosen, though.

The lucky start-ups that would take part in the mentorship and training include:

• Agriple – provides farmers actionable data to determine what crop is best to cultivate
• Farmer First Technologies – financial player providing loans to farmers, and putting them in touch with buyers with better offers
• Foodbank.ng – reduces food wastage while providing food items to households at competitive prices
• Rural Farmers Hub – almost real-time advisory for farmers on crops, using satellite-based imagery.
• Afrilearn – gamified learning platform with video-based learning modules
• DigiLearns – AI-based learning tool with access to high quality educational content.

The others that round up the list are Schoola, Gleeworld Pharmacy, Wellvis and Pharmasev Health Project.

The program is expected to last three months during which these startups will also be exposed to a wide range of investors, amongst other resources that they will benefit from.

CrowdyVest burst onto the scene in 2019 as a local crowdsourcing platform for small and medium scale businesses to achieve their short- and long-term goals with investment from willing users.

The model has worked and grew the portfolio of parent company, Farmcrowdy.

As of the time of this writing, though, CrowdyVest has now become a company of its own too.

An investment round led by Tope Omotolani saw the new company secure important investment from a handful of investors which allows it to stand on its own. Tope also becomes the first CEO of the new brand as it forays out on its own.

The new company has reacted nicely to this exit by pivoting its business model to serve the target market even better.

One of the new products that has been added is a digital savings service for the thousands of platform subscribers that the company boasts right now.

We wish the company the best in all of its endeavours as it hopes to become one of the leading wealth management companies in the country soon.

The gig and freelance economy are booming in this part of the world too. The coronavirus pandemic might have helped this kind of work model gain more traction in little time also.

One of the start-ups that leveraged the boom in this gig economy is ImaliPay, creating financial solutions for different members of the gig economy.

As of the time of this writing, the working model of the start-up is one that allows freelancers to save their incomes and access loans that they can pay back as at when convenient.

ImaliPay has now secured a pre-seed funding to help them scale better and faster across Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The funding also makes it possible for the brand to come up with new financial solutions and products for its target market.

That said, ImaliPay might just be the one that brings serious credit history into our economy.

The more freelancers save their incomes on the platform – and the more they pay back their loans on time – the better their credit history. This allows them to access even better financial services that the firm provides in the future.

Even after the pre-seed round, we are yet to get details on how much the company got in total. What we know, however, is that the round was led by TEN13, an Australian Ventura capital. Also, part of the seed round were the likes of FINCA Ventures, Changeroom, Optimiser Foundation and Mercy Corps Ventures, among others.