Main Highlights
- PayQin is a cross-border payment business that runs a complete e-wallet solution for West Africa’s underbanked.
- The company’s goal for the year is to attain one million daily transactions and to create a single payment area for West African countries.
- Customers of PayQin may utilize a single app to save mobile money, use cross-border debit cards, make payments, and manage crypto transactions.
- The cash obtained in this round will be utilized to develop a significant presence in the West African market, according to PayQin.
PayQin, a cross-border payment business that runs a complete e-wallet solution for West Africa’s underbanked, has announced a fresh €300,000 seed financing round, bringing the company’s total funding to $1 million. The company’s goal for the year is to attain one million daily transactions and to create a single payment area for West African countries.
PayQin’s funding
PayQin is funded by numerous Baltic business angels and venture capital firms (United Angels VC, Startup Wise Guys), as well as venture capitalist investors from the United States and Africa, including Planet42 co-founder Eerik Oja and Jnis Krms, the creator of PlanGrid (acquired by AutoDesk). It is also a Startup Wise Guys accelerator graduate, especially the first fintech batch supported by Swedbank, the Nordics’ largest bank.
It was founded in 2017 by Fabrice Amalaman and Pierre-Antoine Sesque, is promoting financial inclusion in Africa’s huge underbanked regions, where mobile phone use exceeds banking access by a factor of two. Customers of PayQin may utilize a single app to save mobile money, use cross-border debit cards, make payments, and manage crypto transactions.
PayQin, which was launched in the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, and Mali, which together account for more than 22 percent of West Africa’s population, is working to create a unified payment area for the 400 million people who live in West African nations.
It is the first firm in West African francophone countries to provide cryptocurrency for cross-border payments. The business presently intends to expand the platform to European remittances, resulting in a significant flood of transactions totaling $48 billion in Sub-Saharan Africa alone in 2019.
PayQin’s Collaborations
The company is collaborating with Producement, a product engineering firm formed by Wise graduates, to raise the PayQin platform’s quality to a world-class level. The founders have enlisted the help of a small group of advisors to help them achieve their goals. Iliana Björling Lindeberg, the head of marketing for Jumia Food and Jumia Travel Africa, advises the firm on its growth strategy.
“The Sub-Saharan market is truly unique, with cutting-edge technologies like mobile money and a young population ready to discover what firms like PayQin have to offer. I’m delighted to be a part of PayQin’s progress because they fill a unique need in this market. Concepts like these are giving banks a run for their money, according to Lindeberg.
In a strategic collaboration with Africa’s leading fintech firm, Flutterwave, the company is providing free virtual cards in order to expose small local business owners to the world of online advertisements in order to market their products and services and improve sales. “We are creating a safe and secure environment for online transactions, allowing the unbanked access to products and services that are not accessible locally,” said PayQin co-founder and CEO Fabrice Amalaman.
The cash obtained in this round will be utilized to develop a significant presence in the West African market, according to PayQin. Furthermore, it will help to accelerate the company’s growth.
Unbanked persons can use an electronic wallet linked to a virtual Visa card to buy and receive payments online anywhere in the globe. The card, which is funded by Cell Money, allows users to receive, save, and spend money using just their mobile phone number. This service is mostly supplied by mobile carriers in the majority of African countries.
As a result, PayQin has formed alliances with telecom providers in order to link with their mobile money systems. Last year, the rapidly growing mobile money business in Sub-Saharan Africa handled $1 billion in transactions each day and earned over $2.4 billion in direct income.
The objective of PayQin is to enable millions of individuals to send and receive payments online. It accepts both domestic and foreign payments. This promotes commerce, the formation of entrepreneurial initiatives, online work, and the creation of new opportunities in the digital economy.
PayQin was founded in June 2017 in London by Fabrice Amalaman and Pierre Antoine Sesque. The company’s headquarters will be relocated to Tallinn, Estonia, in March 2020. Around ten people work for the startup. It seeks to assist unbanked individuals in emerging markets, where just 15% of people have a bank account. It focuses on the African market in particular.
