California-based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz alongside seed investors Khosla Impact and Formation 8 have injected $9.6m in Kenya’s mobile-based financial services company Branch.

The Series A equity funding will allow for expansion into the new markets, scaling operations as well as hiring of talent in the Kenyan market.

Andreessen Horowitz, whose investment in Branch accounted for $9.2m, is a $4bn venture capital fund launched in 2009 that has previously backed firms such as Facebook, AirBnB, Foursquare, Medium, Pinterest and Buzzfeed.

The VC fund did not disclose the equity stake it now controls in Branch.

Based in San Francisco and founded by Matt Flannery, formerly CEO and founder of Kiva, Random Bares, and Daniel Jung, Branch offers small loans disbursed via mobile money.

Alex Rampell, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said that Branch aims to become the largest branchless bank in emerging markets, starting in Kenya.

“There is no team better equipped to handle this challenge. And the volume, profitability/sustainability, and cost of loans is among the best we’ve seen of any fintech company,” he said.

At the moment, Branch has set a loan limit of Kes 50,000 for loans with the average loans by users set at Kes 4,000.

The repayment periods for these loans range between three weeks to one year with the interest rates charged between 6% to 16%.

According to Branch, the default rate of these loans currently stands at 5% a significant drop from 25% when they began operations.

To use the service, users download an app and sign in through Facebook.

Currently, Branch has 150,000 users in Kenya alone and recently issued its first loan in Tanzania.

The combination of smartphones, digital money, and machine learning offers an opportunity to leapfrog old-fashioned credit infrastructure, and that’s precisely what Branch is doing, explained Rampell.

“It’s like a combination of proprietary credit bureau and bank all in one, all wrapped into an Android app that anyone can download. It works by referencing the data on your phone, with your permission, for underwriting. Once the loan is approved, the funds are transmitted instantly, digitally, via M-Pesa,” he said.

“We are incredibly excited to partner with Matt and the Branch team. The funding will go to help them expand to new geographies, such as Tanzania, which they just launched in this week, and become the best branchless bank in underserved regions across the globe,” said Rampell.

Branch previously raised $1.4m (KES140m) in seed funding from Khosla Impact and Formation 8.

To date, Branch has raised $10.8m in equity funding.