Cardtonic raises $2.1M seed
Nigerian fintech Cardtonic closed a $2.1 million seed round to back Pil, its B2B expense platform that supports multi‑currency payments and stablecoin rails. The raise highlights early capital flowing into Africa‑focused expense and treasury tooling. (x.com)
Cardtonic has raised $2.1 million in seed funding to build Pil, a new business spending product for African companies. (cardtonic.com) The Lagos-based fintech said Pil is a standalone business-to-business platform for expense management, built after years of running Cardtonic itself without outside funding. The company said the round came from angel investors who had followed its work over time. (cardtonic.com) Pil lets businesses create virtual dollar cards, fund them in naira, cedi, or the stablecoin USD Coin, and track spending from a web dashboard. Cardtonic said the product is aimed at companies making large payments for software, procurement, and advertising. (techcabal.com) The pitch is built around a common problem for African businesses: bank cards can fail on urgent international payments, come with shifting limits, or be hard to fund. Cardtonic said it first built Pil as an internal tool after facing those same issues while paying for its own tools and ads. (techcabal.com) That makes this raise part of a wider shift inside African fintech, where startups that began with consumer payments are moving into software for businesses. Cardtonic’s consumer app still sells gift cards, offers virtual dollar cards, pays bills, and sells gadgets in Nigeria and Ghana. (cardtonic.com) (techcabal.com) Cardtonic said it had stayed self-funded for six years before this round and now has more than 120 employees. Its press materials say the company has millions of users, while a September 2025 founder interview put the figure at about 1.5 million users. (cardtonic.com) (ctlanding.cardtonic.com) (africabusinesscommunities.com) Pil is being positioned separately because Cardtonic says consumer payments and business spending require different operating structures. The company said business customers need tighter controls, clearer accounting, and more dependable payment rails than a retail app typically provides. (techcabal.com) The money is meant to pay for the less visible parts of the product: compliance, liquidity, and the infrastructure needed to move money reliably across currencies. Cardtonic said that was the point where founder capital and operating revenue were no longer enough. (cardtonic.com) For Cardtonic, the round turns an internal workaround into a separate fintech bet. The next test is whether Pil can become a regular finance tool for African companies that need international payments to work on the first try. (cardtonic.com)
