The past year has proved a highly successful one for African fintech startups, as the pandemic has warranted a greater need for access to digital services, both on the provider and customer side of things.

For Nairobi-based B2B startup MarketForce it has been a particular good year, with the company only announcing its pre-Series A funding round seven months and more recent closing a Series A round with $40 million.

“The round was led by V8 Capital Partners – a London and Lagos based African-focused investment vehicle – with participation from Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, Vu Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures and Uncovered Fund,” a press release sent to Hypertext confirms.

As for what it plans to do now that it is flush with funding, MarketForce appears to be eyeing up the Sub-Saharan Africa space, particularly as it is poised to see a substantial surge in digital transactions in the coming years.

To that end, it is estimated that roughly 90 percent of sub-Saharan African household retail transactions are in cash, and delivered through a network of about 100 million SMEs. With retail payments on the continent expected to top $2.1 trillion by 2025, it is MarketForce’s goal to digitise a large portion of these offline transactions.

“With this round of funding, MarketForce plans to scale merchant inventory financing through a BNPL offering, grow deeper in existing markets and avail more digital financial and banking services through its extensive merchant network. MarketForce has a team of 400 and intends to double the team before the end of the year,” the release adds.

Over the next few years then, it looks like MarketForce will be targeting informal merchants in particular. “We are targeting to serve over 1 million active merchants on our platform in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025,” notes Tesh Mbaabu, co-founder and CEO of MarketForce.