Float, Ghanaian Fintech Startup Acquires Nigeria’s Accounteer to Roll out Accounting Services to Small Businesses

An undisclosed sum was paid by Float, a Ghanaian fintech firm, to fully purchase Accounteer, a Nigerian cloud-based accounting business that offers bookkeeping, tax preparation, and financial counseling services all on one platform.

Eight months after Float obtained its $17 million in equity and debt startup capital, this acquisition was finalized.

The discussion that resulted in the acquisition, according to Jesse Ghansah, co-founder of Float, began in 2021, and it took close to 10 months before the deal was finally finalized.

Along with its core offering of flexible credit lines for companies to cover cash flow gaps, Float also offers bill automation, vendor or supplier payments, and invoice collections. It also assists companies in connecting and managing all of their bank accounts and digital wallets from a single dashboard.

Additionally, it aids users in opening business accounts, creating payment links, and controlling spending and budgeting. The business has added new features like rapid payouts and revenue advances, and it is currently experimenting with cross-border remittance in collaboration with businesses who provide this service.

Float aims to serve as the “financial operating system” for small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa.

One of the main causes of the low levels of business credit penetration, according to Ghansah, is that the majority of small enterprises lack formal financial processes and records, making it challenging for large lenders to evaluate them and grant them credit.

The majority of business owners mix up their personal and professional transactions, according to Ghansah, who also claimed that they lack basic accounting and bookkeeping procedures. This needed to be fixed broadly. Customers of Float will thus benefit from a solution to this issue provided by the new Accounteer dashboard.

Accounteer, a platform founded in 2015 by Merijn Campsteyn, offers users the ability to make invoices, keep track of spending, and record payments.

The venture-backed business offers accounting software that enables companies to operate off-line. Accounteer’s departure occurred as it was attempting to extend credit to its more than 14,000 members inside and outside of Nigeria.

Since they discovered the accounting issue, Ghansah said he has been keeping an eye on a few accounting companies. He was “especially pleased with Accounteer’s trajectory over the years to become the cloud accounting software choice for 14,000+ SMBs in Nigeria and worldwide.”

As they scale into new markets with the 2 firms, he thinks the addition of Accounteer to Float’s ecosystem of goods and services will be revolutionary.

Ghansah thinks Accounteer has established a reliable enough company and will carry on operating independently under Float. While Accounteer is doing the bookkeeping and accounting, Float would grant credit.

The CEO Campsetyn, who is presently assisting with the redesign and integration of both platforms, will serve as an advisor for the time being even though the majority of the Accounteer talent pool will be joining Float.

With a goal to open in Kenya by the end of this year, Float is already active in Ghana and Nigeria.