Thepeer, an African tech infrastructure startup connecting companies’ wallets, has raised a $2.1 million seed spherical led by the Raba Partnership. The information comes a 12 months after the startup raised $220,000 in pre-seed from a handful of angel buyers, together with Paystack CTO Ezra Olubi and Edenlife CTO Prosper Otemuyiwa.
Collaborating buyers in Thepeer’s seed spherical embrace RaliCap, Timon Capital, BYLD Ventures, Musha Ventures, Sunu and Uncovered Fund. African fintechs Chipper Money and Sew invested too.
Thepeer isn’t a pure fintech play; it sits on the intersection of information and finance. Nonetheless, the issues Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye and Michael “Trojan” Okoh needed to unravel once they first launched the corporate in August 2021 affected fintechs greater than every other phase. Like different API-based startups, Thepeer powers infrastructure for primarily fintech companies, from small to medium-sized.
Final 12 months, the variety of African fintechs increased 17.3% to 573, from 491 in 2019, in line with native publication Disrupt Africa. Most of those fintechs cater to companies and customers, providing completely different companies comparable to funds, neobanking, lending, investing and buying and selling. Whereas they supply digital wallets to assist facilitate cash transfers, there’s a scarcity of cellular pockets interoperability exterior their ecosystem; in essence, transferring cash from one fintech pockets to a different fintech or non-fintech pockets (within the case of an embedded finance play) is difficult.
Thepeer says its APIs present an alternate community the place fintechs and companies can embed completely different units of merchandise into their functions and web sites for simple cash motion by their clients.
Send, the providing it launched with, permits clients of companies who combine with its APIs, comparable to Eversend (a cross-border fintech) and Nguvu Well being (a teletherapy platform), to ship cash throughout each platforms utilizing identifiers comparable to emails or usernames.
“I made a purchase order from a vendor and couldn’t pay after utilizing a number of apps and couldn’t transfer cash from one pockets the place I had money to a different,” stated CEO Ononye, narrating why he and CTO Okoh began the corporate, to TechCrunch in an interview. “After we launched our first product [Send], we went again to the drafting board as a result of there have been issues we would have liked to get proper. In that course of, we found extra shopper and enterprise issues.”
After Ship, Thepeer partnered with Flutterwave — the unicorn whose API gateways are essentially the most intensive in Africa for cellular wallets and financial institution accounts — and constructed on its platform to achieve extra attain. The partnership has helped it launch two further B2B2C merchandise: Direct Cost and Checkout.
Direct Charge lets clients of about 15 companies fund their wallets from one another. Right here’s the way it works. As a person of Nguvu Well being, there are completely different strategies to fund a pockets, comparable to playing cards and financial institution transfers; Thepeer is an alternative choice. So, when Nguvu Well being customers choose Thepeer, they will select any of the 15 wallets, combine them with their Nguvu Well being pockets and provoke a direct cost transaction.
“One superb factor about Thepeer is that it has made it simpler for folks to pay for remedy on the Nguvu Well being app, which makes it simple and inexpensive for Africans to entry remedy from their smartphones,” stated Nguvu Well being CEO Joshua Koya about Thepeer’s integration. “Our customers now have choices with Thepeer’s integration with different fintech wallets the place they will pay for remedy.”
Checkout works equally, nevertheless, on the websites of companies comparable to on-line meals and clothes shops. Thepeer reveals up as a checkout technique when clients store on-line and lets them pay for objects from Bitsika, Eversend, Chipper Money and Paga wallets.
The one-year-old fintech startup has seen a median month-on-month transaction development of 161% since its launch. And with the launch of Ship, its new product targeted on serving to companies ship cash between each other through its dashboard (not the consumer-facing one), its month-to-month transaction quantity has grown over 65x to “eight-figure” million {dollars}.
“We see our product as a platform powered by APIs that helps join fintechs, customers and companies by providing seamless cash motion,” stated Ononye. “At present, there are practically 600 fintechs throughout the continent, most of which function siloed wallets. Our objective is to make it doable to attach and make funds from any pockets. We’re constructing an working system so that companies can supply extra companies to their clients.”
What began as a problem for the founders transferring worth round their numerous apps has turn into an infrastructure with a number of companies built-in and offering extra worth for his or her customers. This development is what made Raba Partnership lead the spherical. George Rzepecki, its founder, in a press release, likened Thepeer’s transfer to unify Africa’s pockets ecosystem to how Flutterwave entered the fragmented card and cellular cash funds house in 2015.
“With the proliferation of shopper and B2B fintechs throughout Africa, Thepeer is constructing a foundational API-based funds layer the place fintechs can allow cash motion natively from inside their respective wallets and apps,” he continued. “We’re extremely excited to assist this bold workforce constructing a next-generation community.”
Thepeer continues Raba Partnership’s lengthy checklist of fintech investments in Africa. Though it has invested in some shopper platforms like Thndr and Djamo, Raba is a recognized backer of infrastructure performs comparable to Flutterwave, Yoco, Stitch, Axis Pay and OnePipe.
What subsequent for Thepeer? In accordance with Ononye, the startup is trying to roll out extra functionalities and wallets in different currencies (its present platform offers with Naira wallets) in addition to rent extra expertise and put money into product improvement. “Our focus stays on product innovation and serving our clients who function throughout completely different geographies,” he stated.
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