Nigerian YC-backed startup Anchor comes out of stealth –
Summary
Thats the problem we decided to solve as a team, basically the full end-to-end infrastructure for startups to be able to build, embed and launch financial services.Banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms are one of the hottest segments in the global fintech space, with upstarts like Unit and Rapyd hitting unicorn valuations and older startups such as Stripe spinning off similar services. Per reports, it can take up to 18 months and an average of $500,000 to launch a fintech on the continent as they deal with issues ranging from licensing and compliance processes and multiple integration layers to managing third-party relationships and core banking infrastructure.Anchor wants to abstract away these complexities so pure fintechs and businesses offering embedded finance can get started in five minutes, said Adeyemi in a statement. Thats our value proposition, he added on the call.The seven-month-old startup provides APIs, dashboards and tools that help developers embed and build banking products such as bank accounts, funds transfers, savings products, issuing cards and offering loans.Anchor, accepted into Y Combinators summer batch this year as the first banking-as-a-service platform from the continent, went live with its private beta this May. Adeyemi argues that the founding teams technical experience, attention to security and scalability and the speed at which businesses can go live on its platform give Anchor some edge. Businesses also need to consider high switching costs when using BaaS platforms, and for a startup like Anchor, being a first mover is a sustainable competitive advantage, he added.