Nigerian startup Blueloop raises $77k pre-seed funding as it builds out crypto-based payments app

Nigerian fintech startup Blueloop has taken on US$77,000 in pre-seed funding this year as it builds Flux, a mobile app for crypto-based cross-border payments.

Founded by Ben Eluan, Osezele Orukpe and Israel Akintunde, Blueloop is the company behind Flux, a mobile payments app for cross-border payments using cryptocurrencies. Using Flux, individuals and businesses can send and receive money from anywhere in the world, instantly convert it into cash, and spend it locally from their Flux Wallets. 

Flux works like a regular bank app, allowing users to send and receive money locally, send money to banks, and pay for goods and services.

The founding team started work on Flux full-time in February, and had a first prototype by April. It went live in September, and the startup is now working to perfect and scale its product having taken on a total of US$77,000 in pre-seed funding over the last few months. The investment came from Hustle Fund VC, Pioneer, Mozilla, and some angel investors.

Eluan told Disrupt Africa the initial concept for Flux came when the team was working on a project at university named Joppa. Built for fun, Joppa helped students find and buy products  from merchants within the university.

“Our product blew up and attracted 20,000 students when we launched it,” Eluan said.

This inspired them to build Flux, and after a period of researching cryptocurrencies and KYC, the team spotted a gap in the payments space.

“There were a lot of apps that let you receive cash from some major countries using fiat, but there was still so much work to be done in terms of how fast users can get their cash available for spending and how cheap they could do this,” said Eluan.

Flux’s ability in these regards is what makes him confident it can compete with the likes of Bundle in an already busy market.

“Our advantage is that we have built our app to have more functionalities. For example it can be used by merchants to accept payments, gig people to receive payments, and regular users to send and receive money,” he said. 

“Here in Nigeria we can pay for Bolt using bank transfer, and our users use our app to do this also, pay for stuff in malls, send money to other banks, and all this combined with great user experience.”

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