African payments company pawaPay, has received a Ksh. 988 million ($9 million) Seed raise. The round was led by UK-based investment fund 88mph, with participation from Vunani Capital, Kepple Ventures, MSA and Zagadat Capital.
The capital raised will be used to scale pawaPay’s operational presence, find more talent to join the team, and expand into new markets on the continent.
Since its inception in 2020, pawaPay is focused on the mobile money infrastructure provided by telecommunications companies (telcos) in Africa. Each telco in each country provides its own unique mobile money product, which makes the mobile money infrastructure as a whole highly fragmented and opaque. For merchants, this fragmentation is unnecessarily expensive and unstable to use. Through pawaPay’s simple API, merchants can access more than 300 million customers in more than ten markets and enjoy seamless, transparent and highly reliable payments.
pawaPay’s customers are large Pan-Africa and global merchants and companies needing to make payments to African consumers’ accounts. The company handles local operations, compliance, regulatory cover and bank accounts, making it as simple as clicking a button to start receiving payments in a new market.
Commenting on the company’s raise and growth prospects, Nikolai Barnwell, CEO of pawaPay said, “Africa’s alternative financial infrastructure is in an exciting phase with double digits CAGR everywhere. And mobile money has come out as the de facto money infrastructure for hundreds of millions of people on the continent. A quarter of the adult population is an active mobile money user. A third of all wallet holders have their salaries paid into them. We’re making a bet that this infrastructure will continue to grow and offer a superior experience than traditional financial infrastructures such as card and banking.”
Kresten Buch, Founder of 88mph added, “When we first invested in Africa in 2010, one of the key drivers was that mobile money was a superior payment method to credit and debit cards when used for online payment. So, we are excited to be an investor in pawaPay’s journey and continue to witness the development of digital infrastructure in Africa.”
Mr. Eazi, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur and Founder of Zagadat Capital, added, “Being investors hugely focused on Africa and very familiar with the landscape, we believe that mobile money-focused fintech is not just one of the most exciting places to invest but also one of the most important bridges to ensuring financial inclusion of the billions of people across the continent, the kicker for us was that we believe in the clear mission, vision and strategy.”