In just two years, serial entrepreneur Jesse Ghansah transformed Float into a promising fintech startup now trusted by several investors.

In January 2022, Ghanaian fintech Float raised US$17 million, a comparatively high amount raised by an African startup for its expansion. During the funding round, the startup co-founded in 2020, by Jesse Ghansah (photo, right) and Barima Effah (photo, left) seduced notable investors like Tiger Global, JAM Fund, Cauris, Kinfolk, Soma Capital, Ingressive Capital, and Magic Fund. Several angel investors also contributed. With the proceed, the startup plans to enter the South African and Kenyan markets.  

Through Float, Jesse Ghansah helps small and medium businesses manage and monitor their cashflows in real time, pay supplier debts, and access loans for critical business expenses. 

“Businesses that serve other businesses have to wait typically for 30-90 days for their payments to come in. This is like a traditional payment cycle where you have to offer credit sales to your customers to stay competitive. that’s why you send an invoice, and the customer will pay you back within that time frame,”  he indicates.

According to Techcrunch -quoting a UN research report-, “85% of African SMBs have zero access to financing, and each day, African SMBs have billions locked up in receivables due to long payment cycles.”  They, therefore, face cash flow problems that prevent them from paying for important expenses and delivering orders on time. 

Float is created to address such problems, Ghansah explains. The loans granted through Float help address the liquidity problems that could be caused by late client payments. Firms also have no worries about paying salaries when their cash flow is tight. They can seamlessly repay the received loans when all the clients pay their invoices.  

Jesse Ghansah graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in 2014, with a BSc in Biochemistry, Biotechnology, and Molecular Medicine. The same year, he quicked off his entrepreneurial career by co-founding the e-commerce platform Swipe Commerce and Zita Cakery. In 2015, he founded OMG Digital, the media company that owns OMGVoice and Bitnode. He also created Hivegig, the first Ghanaian online freelance marketplace that connects individuals and companies with freelance workers. 

To ensure the success of Float, from 2019 to 2020, he upgraded his machine learning and artificial intelligence skill at the Bloom Institute of Technology, also known as BloomTech.

Melchior Koba