Editor’s note: African-Startups is a sister publication of EU-Startups, bringing trusted coverage of startups, venture capital, and innovation across Africa.
NectarFi, a cross-border financial platform that brings together tools needed by crypto users to spend, save, send, trade, invest, and access credit, has come out of stealth. The company has closed a $170k pre-Seed funding round to accelerate product development and geographic expansion.
The raise comes as the startup emerges from months-long private testing across users in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, and Argentina. During the beta testing, the startup onboarded over 1,000 users and processed more than $7.2 million in transaction volume before its first public day. Its founders claim that this test provided them with real transaction data across diverse financial markets before it went live.
While NectarFi has not disclosed details of its investors, its argument for a new crypto platform is grounded in reality. For most crypto users, managing money is not a unified experience, but rather dependent on four to five apps. There is one to hold assets, another to spend, a third to send money across borders, and another to trade or invest. NectarFi is trying to unify all those experiences into a single, coherent platform.
“Crypto users have been spending, saving, and transacting for years with nothing to show for it when they need credit or a complete financial experience. We built NectarFi to change that,” said Felix Daniel, founder and CEO of NectarFi.
Built on Solana, NectarFi works with several infrastructure partners across payments, custody, and asset management. This includes Perena, Raincards, Xstocks, Ondo, Jupiter, and Privy. The product offers a self-custodial wallet, VISA cards and global payments for spending, gas-fee-free crypto trading, dollar-denominated savings with milestone-based savings that digitise the group savings culture common across Africa and Latin America, and the ability to invest in tokenised stocks alongside traditional crypto assets.
Payment rails span bank transfers in Nigeria, PIX in Brazil, QR-code payments across Southeast Asia, and SWIFT internationally. Currently, blockchain operations run in the background, and users interact with a familiar interface without the need for deep knowledge of crypto wallets or on-chain mechanics.
“From PIX in Brazil to bank transfers in Nigeria to Swift globally — this is one app that works wherever you do,” added Daniel.
While the crypto platform eliminates the need for multiple apps, its most ambitious feature – credit layer – is not yet live. The platform is being designed to recognise all on-chain transaction history and turn it into a foundation for credit access. This will essentially make years of responsible crypto behaviour work the same way a traditional banking record works to determine creditworthiness.
“Most people do not think about the pipes that move water through their homes. They just turn on the tap. We built NectarFi so that crypto users can finally have that same experience with their money — powerful infrastructure working quietly underneath a financial life that actually makes sense,” said Stephanie Okeke, COO and co-founder of NectarFi.
A credit layer can be transformational and help those not represented or supported by traditional banking systems. It can expand financial inclusion and the founders of NectarFi argue it is the “feature that makes everything else matter long-term.“
