Canza Finance Raises $3.27M For Expansion Across Africa

Canza Finance, an emerging markets neobank that is building the world’s largest non-institutional-based financial system, announced today the completion of its $3.27M seed round.

The fundraising round was led by Fenbushi Capital, with participation from Dominance Ventures, Bixin Ventures, ConsenSys Mesh, Protocol Labs, Emurgo Ventures, MEXC Global, NGC Ventures, XanPool, HashKey, the founders of Celo and others. This funding enables Canza to grow its headcount and expand its service offering in Nigeria and other growth regions, including South America and Asia.

Established in 2020, Canza relies on a robust network of experienced local money market players to distribute financial and transaction-based services to users in Sub-Saharan African countries. Canza’s seamless crypto on/off-ramp services enable a wide range of DeFi services, including staking, P2P, and cross-border settlements—aiming to contribute to the creation of an innovative and fully decentralised financial system.

Oyedeji Oluwoye, Co-founder and CTO of Canza Finance commented, “Today, we stand at a critical juncture in the journey to democratising finance, with Nigeria emerging at the vanguard of crypto adoption globally. Against a backdrop of high inflation, financial instability and barriers to access of traditional financial services, sub-Saharan Africa’s underdeveloped financial infrastructure has made the region a perfect vector for decentralised finance. According to a 2021 report by KPMG, more than 1 in 3 Nigerian adults are excluded from traditional finance. Our vision is to become leaders in decentralised finance and to spearhead this movement to offer financial freedom to millions of individuals. The tremendous interest and backing of our investors and strategic partners will enable us to grow the world-class Canza team, improve our security and most importantly, take a definitive leadership position in our target markets.”

Managing Partner at Fenbushi Capital, Bo Shen said: “The rate of cryptocurrency adoption in high-growth markets—particularly Africa—not only signals growing excitement for this new digital economy but the advance of real-world use cases. This traction, combined with Sub-Saharan Africa’s market, social and community conditions, uniquely positions it as an environment where a project like Canza will thrive.”

Colin Evran, Ecosystem Lead at Protocol Labs, commented, “Canza is a shining example of the power of the Filecoin Launchpad Accelerator to transform promising early-stage projects into high-growth businesses on the brink of making a huge impact in developing markets and Web3 ecosystem. Given the early traction of Canza, we are delighted to help expand access to Web3 technologies like and decentralised identity tools and KYC options to the sub-Saharan Africa region. We’re excited to help the next cohort of African innovators turn their visions for Web 3.0 into reality.”