Ghana's Float acquires Nigeria's Accounteer in an undisclosed deal

Nigerian cloud-based accounting service platform, Accounteer has been fully acquired by Float, a Ghanaian cash flow management platform for an undisclosed amount.

Accounteer was founded in 2015 by Merijn Campsteyn to allow users to create invoices, track expenses and register payments, among other things. The Accounting-as-a-service platform had earlier grown to serve more than 14,000 SMBs primarily in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Accounteer had raised money from Microtraction, Ventures Platform and MEST (it won $50,000 in MEST Africa Challenge in June 2018). The platform also participated in the Itanna accelerator program in Lagos.

The exit came for Accounteer to help provide credit to its over 14,000 users in and outside Nigeria. For Float, the acquisition was motivated by the need to help businesses structure their financial processes and records. This need prevented them from getting loans from traditional lending platforms.

Speaking on the acquisition, Jesse Ghansah, the CEO of Float said, "most business owners are conflating their personal transactions with their business transactions. They don’t have proper accounting practices and proper bookkeeping practices in place. We wanted to fix this at scale."

Float is a fintech startup, which makes cash available for businesses to restock inventory, buy supplies or pay their workers on time. Earlier in January 2022, the startup raised $17m (in equity and debt seed funding) to bolster its offerings and expand geographically.

The startup extends loans to businesses that are expecting payment from clients after they’ve rendered the service but need cash urgently to run daily operations.

Float was co-founded by Jesse Ghansah and Barima Effah Adjei in 2021. Notably, the conversation that led to the acquisition started in 2021, and it took close to 10 months before the deal was finally closed.

Float is positioning itself to be the "financial operating system"  for Africa’s small and medium businesses. The startup also offers a suite of services such as bill automation, vendor or supplier payments, revenue advances and instant payouts. Likewise, it opens business accounts, generates links and manages budgeting and spending cards.

With the addition of Accounteer's ecosystem of products and services, the Float team believes it will be game-changing as they scale into new markets with both businesses.

Most of the Accounteer talent pool would be joining Float. However, Campsetyn, who is currently helping with the redesigning and integration of both platforms, won’t be joining Float full-time but he will serve as an advisor during the transition. Float is currently operational in Nigeria and Ghana with a plan to expand into Kenya before the fourth quarter of this year.

A good number of acquisitions of Nigerian startups by foreign and local startups or investors have happened in the past few years. Some of them include Mainone's acquisition by Equinix, Konga's acquisition by Zinox Group in 2016, Vanso's acquisition by Interswitch, and Paystack's acquisition by Stripe. As well as, Piggyvest's acquisition of Abeg and Bloc's acquisition of Orchestrate in July.