South African Payment Orchestration Platform Revio Secures $5.2 Million Seed Funding from QED and Partech
The payment landscape in Africa is still fragmented, with several payment operators providing different payment options to customers as well as businesses. Due to this fragmentation, payment failures are inevitable due to factors such as invalid cards, inactive accounts, and high dispute rates.
Payment Orchestration: The Solution to Fragmentation
One of the few startups working on payment orchestration to address this fragmentation is Revio from South Africa. Ruaan Botha, the co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that he started the fintech after learning how much time and manual effort businesses spend collecting payments across various providers and understanding the need for a more streamlined solution.
Revio’s Mission
Revio’s mission is to build a platform that can unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent. The startup aims to help global and local merchants reach new customer segments by providing a comprehensive payment processing solution.
Target Market
Revio’s primary target market includes large-scale enterprises with complex payment requirements, as well as recurring revenue businesses that are somewhat underserved and have unique risks and complexities around collecting payment tokenization and tackling high failure rates. These clients include four of Africa’s largest insurers and two of the continent’s largest telcos (Old Mutual, MTN’s aYo, Innovation Group, and Standard Bank are examples).
Revenue Growth
According to Dunn, Revio has seen its revenue increase by 1,000% in the past year. The newly injected capital will develop the company’s technological capabilities in cross-border reconciliation settlement and expand its team by hiring talent within and outside the continent.
Partnership with QED Investors
Gbenga Ajayi, partner and Africa lead at QED Investors, said, "We have a strong conviction that payments in Africa hasn’t been fully solved. Revio is building a platform that can unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent and help global and local merchants reach new customer segments." He added, "We are excited to back the exceptional team that has proven they can execute even in tough market conditions and localize very strongly to win enterprise customers."
Future Plans
Revio plans to target global retailers servicing the African market during its next development phase. The startup has begun interactions with a few of these merchants to understand better what it would take to service them effectively, mainly as it builds capabilities around cross-border reconciliation settlement.
Conclusion
The payment landscape in Africa is complex and fragmented, making payment failures inevitable due to factors such as invalid cards, inactive accounts, and high dispute rates. Revio’s mission to build a platform that can unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent is a step towards solving this problem. With its primary target market being large-scale enterprises with complex payment requirements, Revio has seen significant revenue growth in the past year. The partnership with QED Investors will further develop the company’s technological capabilities and expand its team.
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