Sparkle pulls off $3.1 million seed funding to scale its operations

Sparkle, a Nigerian digital bank has raised $3.1 million in a seed funding round to scale operations.

The round was led by Leadway Assurance with participation from Trium Network and a few unnamed high-net-worth individuals.

The investment comes after Sparkle closed a friends and family pre-seed round of $2 million within the past year.

Since its inception last year, the neobank has amassed over 40,000 personal banking users and 2,000 businesses. The company began collecting small fees to individual users to keep their accounts operating and aims to charge companies for most functions except taxation services.

In April, the company launched Sparkle Business to target a new category of underserved users: small and medium enterprises. This category has taken to the new business arm well since it now has access to inventory and invoice management, tax guidance, and payroll and personnel administration services TechCrunch reported.

These businesses can use these features by providing a tax identification number (TIN) and an email address, which is the simplest form of paperwork available.