In the competitive world of early-stage investing, few statements stand out quite like the one made recently by Charlie Graham-Brown, Chief Investment Officer and Co-founder of Seedstars. Reflecting on the firm’s record-breaking first quarter of 2025, Graham-Brown singled out one startup with particular reverence: Raenest, a Lagos-based fintech serving Africa’s freelance and business payments market.
“Raenest is the only team that 3x’d before we even invested,” he wrote on LinkedIn. It was both praise and signal — a rare endorsement in the cautious terrain of global venture capital.
The remark came as Seedstars announced that four of its portfolio companies had collectively raised $70 million in Series A rounds in Q1, a record quarter for the group. Among the four — Cinch, iMotorbike, and OmniRetail Africa — Raenest’s $11 million Series A stood out not only for its scale but for the rapid growth trajectory the company had demonstrated before the capital even landed.
Founded in 2022 by Victor Alade, Sodruldeen Mustapha, and Richard Oyome, Raenest began life as an Employer of Record (EOR) platform. The premise was to help global employers pay African talent in compliance with local laws. But the team quickly pivoted after identifying a more acute problem: individuals and small businesses struggling to receive international payments.
The solution? A financial platform that offers virtual USD, GBP, and EUR accounts, multi-currency wallets, and debit cards to both freelancers and enterprises across Africa. The company says it has processed more than $1 billion in payments and now serves over 700,000 users and 300 businesses.
Raenest’s rapid ascent has taken place against a backdrop of mounting investor interest in Africa’s digital payments infrastructure. Its Series A round — led by QED Investors, with participation from Norrsken22, Ventures Platform, P1 Ventures, and Seedstars — brings its total funding to $14.3 million.
The Seedstars investment in Raenest signifies a wider thesis taking hold among early-stage investors in Africa. With digital workforces expanding, remittance corridors remaining complex, and traditional banks lagging in service provision for remote workers and startups, a new generation of financial technology firms is racing to close the gap.
Raenest is not the only startup vying to serve this segment. Competitors such as Afriex, Cleva, Fincra, Grey, Verto, and Leatherback offer variants of virtual bank accounts and multi-currency solutions. However, Raenest is one of the few platforms in the sector targeting both freelancers and businesses from the outset, enabling it to tap into a broader user base and diversify its revenue streams.
That strategy appears to be paying off. Raenest’s corporate clientele now includes Nigerian scaleups like Moniepoint, Helium Health, Fez Delivery, and Matta, suggesting the startup is gaining early traction among leading technology firms on the continent.
A Fund Betting on Scale
Raenest’s success also marks a vote of confidence in Seedstars’ pan-African investment thesis. Seedstars Africa Ventures I — which announced a $42 million first close in late 2024 — is targeting early-stage investments across the continent, with ticket sizes of up to $2 million and follow-on capacity of $5 million. Anchored by the African Development Bank and EIB Global, with support from the European Union and LBO France, the fund is seeking scalable, tech-driven solutions across sectors from energy and food systems to finance.
With offices in Nairobi, Dakar, and Paris, the fund has already committed over $10 million to five companies and continues to court LPs for an $80 million target.