I bet you didn’t know your investment assets could do more than sit pretty on your dashboard—they can spot you a loan.
Nigerian fintech Carrot Credit is a digital lending platform that lets retail investors (that’s you, me, and every nonprofessional investor who buys and sells funds/securities for personal accounts) to take out loans using investment assets—like stocks, crypto, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), or bonds—as collateral.
How much this platform lets you borrow really depends on your portfolio. Stocks can get you up to 40% of its value, while more stable assets like government bonds and treasury bills can unlock as much as 70% of its value. Assets like crypto? 10% Let’s just say the more volatile your portfolio is, the less you can get from it. You don’t have to sell any of your assets to get a loan—Carrot Credit just places a hold on it until you repay. Cool, right?
Here’s what’s cooler: They just secured $4.2 million in seed funding to scale across Africa.
In a funding round led by MaC Venture Capital, with participation from Authentic Ventures, Carrot Credit plans to take Africa by the storm, expand its team, and strengthen connections with digital investment platforms.
Carrot Credit claims to play a different game: Unlike other digital lenders in Nigeria, including Sycamore, Carbon, Aella, FairMoney, which focus on short-term credit, this platform bets on its portfolio-backed credit with flexible repayment and lower interest rates.
This lending model isn’t entirely new. BlockFi, Quick Lend, Lantern Finance, and SALT have walked this path abroad. However, this model is in its early days for Africa.
Can they make it work? This lending model is clever—borrowing against what you already own. Clever doesn’t always mean familiar. African retail investing is still growing; many people are just warming up to digital investments. Will this catch on? This infrastructure is here for everyday investors to leverage, but like most things in finance, adoption won’t come down to what’s possible. It’ll come down to what people believe is worth trying.
