Fintech incubator 42Markets and its South African subsidiaries have received a R182-million investment from Convergence Partners and various development finance institutions.

The lion’s share of the investment goes to Mesh.trade, a trading platform launched in South Africa last year and designed to make the capital markets more accessible to ordinary investors.

“Mesh.trade lets market participants issue, tokenise, trade, settle and life-cycle-manage multiple classes of digital securities at a fraction of the time and cost taken by market intermediaries in the traditional capital markets,” Convergence Partners said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Mesh has built an institution-grade, decentralised, multi-sided financial markets platform to bridge the gap between TradFi (the traditional world of financial and capital markets), AltFi (a range of alternative, traditionally illiquid financial assets and investment instruments) and DeFi (the new decentralised finance world of distributed ledger technology and ‘tokenomics’),” Convergence Partners, which is chaired by businessman Andile Ngcaba, said.

“The introduction of Convergence Partners as new investors will enable the 42Markets Group to accelerate growth through the buildout of its product set and further geographic expansion,” it said.

The investment is being made through the Convergence Partners Digital Infrastructure Fund, a US$296-million private equity fund focused on investing in digital infrastructure opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Instrumental’

Some 14 development finance institutions from the UK, the Europe Union and Africa also took part in the transaction.

“42Markets Group is focused on the digital transformation and improved efficiency of capital markets in Africa. The business is well placed to enable second-tier capital markets to improve their capabilities to reduce friction and costs, and improve transparency and real-time risk management, across a broad range of financial products, ultimately extending the reach of banking and financial services to a broader cross section of the population,” Convergence Partners said.

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Andries Brink, group CEO of 42Markets Group, said: “Convergence Partners has been instrumental in Africa digitally leapfrogging the world through key investments in fibre and data infrastructure. Together we will now do the same for financial markets, in connecting central banks and other big asset generators to corporate and retail investors, safely and accurately, across the full spectrum of capital markets solutions.” – © 2023 NewsCentral Media