Kenyan church-focused fintech startup Jumuisha raises seed funding for expansion
Written by TOM JACKSON
Kenyan fintech startup Jumuisha, which helps churches and NGOs receive donations, make payments and manage events all in one place, has raised a round of seed funding to help it scale.
Launched in October 2020, Jumuisha allows churches to receive donations via USSD, bank transfer, mobile money, online payment or credit cards, and also make payments to contractors, suppliers and employees. The platform brings inward and outward financial transactions together, providing a real-time overview and generating financial reports.
“We identified the problem during the COVID-19 pandemic when the government mandated a reduction in the seating capacity of churches to one-third,” co-founder James Chege told Disrupt Africa.
“Our solution helped church members to reserve seats and enabled the church administration to maintain a manifest of members who attended the services for the purpose of contact tracing. Based on initial success, we grew the platform further for the churches to receive donations from their members such as tithe and offerings.”
Jumuisha now has 138 churches, with over 250,000 members combined, using its solution, and has seen over 500,000 bookings and more than 100,000 financial transactions take place via its platform. In July, it raised a round of seed funding to help it expand even further.
The undisclosed amount of capital came from SprintX Venture Studio, based out of Austin, United States (US). Owned by 3pm Ventures, Sprint will also provide Jumuisha with business strategy, marketing and technology expertise to help it grow.
“We are quite excited to join SprintX as their involvement over the past three months helped to refine our strategy and gain traction,” said Chege.
“The seed funding will help us to accelerate product development through key hires and strengthen the sales team. The product so far has been developed by the founding team and the sales too are done by us. With the new funding, we will hire additional resources to address demand and accelerate our growth.”
Kenya has over 4,000 registered churches, with Jumuisha aiming to be the key fintech solution for these churches to help them to manage donations, payments and events.
“Our product will continue to evolve in empowering churches to leverage technology in serving their members and community at large,” said Chege.
“NGO operations are very similar in nature to Churches. Jumuisha is gaining the attention of NGOs and we will be customising our products to address their needs to receive donations and manage payments.”
