While digital lenders like FairMoney, Carbon and M-KOPA dominate headlines, Kuunda, a Tanzanian B2B fintech solutions provider, has become one of the most influential players behind Africa’s booming consumer credit market.
Since its founding in 2018, the company says it has powered more than $3 billion in loans, enabling telecom operators, mobile money platforms and digital lenders to offer credit at scale.
Unlike most fintechs, Kuunda doesn’t lend directly to end users. Instead, it provides liquidity infrastructure and real-time lending technology to partners such as mobile money operators, digital lenders, and small businesses.
“All of our partners have reached scale. They’ve got transactional activity happening on their digital platforms,” Andrew Milne, Co-founder and Co-CEO told Techpoint. “Many of them have spent ten years building up a customer transactional base.”
What You Should Know
Founded by Milne, Sam Brawerman, and Morne van der Westhuizen, Kuunda, which means “create” in Swahili operates as anbusiness-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) embedded financial services company.
This behind-the-scenes model has made the company a critical force driving financial inclusion across the continent.
It says its goal is to bridge persistent liquidity gaps that hinder economic growth in emerging markets, particularly across Africa and Asia. Agents and small businesses serve as the first line of financial access for millions, yet they themselves often struggle to obtain working capital.
Kuunda steps in to empower these intermediaries with accessible, data-backed financing solutions, helping to sustain not just individual enterprises, but entire local economies.
Kuunda’s Model
At the heart of Kuunda’s model is data intelligence. Its proprietary algorithms analyse behavioural and transactional data from its partners, including telecom operators and financial institutions to assess creditworthiness in real time.
This allows Kuunda to identify who needs financing most urgently and who is most likely to repay. Kuunda’s product suite is designed to meet the diverse needs of Africa’s micro and small business ecosystem.
One of Kuunda’s earliest and most successful collaborations was with M-PESA Tanzania, where it helped develop a liquidity system for mobile money agents. Over time, this evolved into a suite of working capital and overdraft products tailored for agents and micro-merchants.
“We optimised the product and grew it from 600,000 users with an NPL of 7.8% to 1.8 million users with an NPL of 1.9%,” Milne says.
Today, Kuunda powers over 85% of M-PESA Tanzania’s loan volume and operates across five African countries and Pakistan, cementing its reputation as a backbone of embedded lending infrastructure.
What This Means
Kuunda’s business model aligns incentives across all stakeholders. Rather than charging partners upfront for product development or integration, Kuunda absorbs those costs. Revenue is generated through a three-way split between Kuunda, the partner bank, and the enterprise once a financial product is live.
This revenue- and risk-sharing structure lowers entry barriers for enterprises seeking to offer embedded finance while ensuring sustainable profit for all parties involved.
Kuunda recently announced the completion of a $7.5 million pre-Series A round, surpassing its initial $3 million target. The round drew participation from prominent investors including Portugal Gateway Fund, Seedstars Africa Ventures, 4Di Capital, Accion Ventures, Nedbank, and E4E Africa.
According to Milne, about $5.5 million from the raise will go toward expanding into seven new markets, scaling operations, and strengthening the team. The company has already launched in Kenya and Mozambique, with plans to enter additional markets without raising extra capital.
The company also plans to evolve into a full-stack digital financial infrastructure provider, beginning with savings products. Another priority is financial literacy.
Pioneering WhatsApp Based Financial Education
Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kuunda is developing a WhatsApp-based financial education bot to help users better understand credit and manage their finances responsibly, directly within platforms they already use.
According to the World Bank’s Global Findex data, nearly 40% of African adults now have a mobile money account, reflecting how financial access is increasingly shifting to mobile platforms.
Experts say this surge in connectivity has turned digital credit into one of Africa’s fastest-growing financial services, with platforms issuing billions of dollars in microloans annually.
According to industry leaders, Kuunda’s rise underscores a critical shift in Africa’s fintech landscape, one where infrastructure providers, not just lenders, are redefining how digital credit works.
Talking Points
Kuunda’s role in powering Africa’s digital lending ecosystem shows how crucial financial infrastructure is to the continent’s fintech growth. By providing liquidity and credit-scoring technology to mobile money operators, digital lenders, and banks, Kuunda enables millions of small businesses and agents to access credit faster and more reliably.
At Techparley, we see how innovations like Kuunda’s embedded finance API can reshape access to working capital across Africa’s informal economy. By empowering agents, shop owners, and MSMEs with short- and medium-term financing, Kuunda is strengthening the foundation for broader economic resilience.
Its B2B2C model is particularly smart, as it leverages the reach of established partners without the burden of customer acquisition or regulatory licensing. This strategy enables Kuunda to scale quickly and sustainably across markets.
Still, as Kuunda expands into more countries, its success will depend on maintaining data quality, deepening partnerships with local financial institutions, and ensuring that its solutions remain inclusive and context-aware.
With strong investor backing and a clear mission to drive inclusive finance, Kuunda is well positioned to become one of Africa’s most important enablers of digital credit infrastructure.
