Grace Ashiru
Miden, a startup from Nigeria, has been selected to take part in Y Combinator’s winter 2024 group. This decision makes Miden the newest Nigerian startup to join this year’s winter group, following in the footsteps of Cleva, a service for cross-border payments.
Miden, which provides virtual cards in both USD and Naira for businesses, was established in 2022 to tackle the operational difficulties associated with traditional payment methods, such as expensive transaction fees, complicated paperwork, and slow card issuance times. The company’s platform, based on API, allows businesses to immediately issue virtual cards in both USD and Naira denominations at a large scale. According to its website, Miden has already issued over 100,000 cards and operates in four countries.
It appears that YC is expressing a strong interest in remittance startups on the continent for this year’s winter group. Cleva, the first disclosed startup, creates dollar accounts to facilitate international payments for individuals and businesses.
This year’s winter group is following a similar trend to YC’s 2022 winter group, which included Grey, a Nigerian startup offering foreign accounts for users; Bloom, a Sudanese startup; Plumter, a Nigerian provider of APIs for cross-border payments; Nash, a Kenyan fintech for borderless transactions; and Lenco, a Nigerian fintech. In 2023, the accelerator selected Vault Pay, a payments infrastructure company from the DRC Congo, Nigeria’s food delivery startup ChowCentral, and Rwanda’s Eden Care
