Lagos-based tech startup Thepeer, which offers digital payment solutions for fintech businesses, has reportedly raised over $2.1 million in its seed round led by Raba Partnership, a South African venture capital firm.
The seed round also saw participation from investors such as Timon Capital, Musha Ventures, RaliCap, Sunu and Uncovered Fund, and BYLD Ventures. Moreover, local fintechs Stitch and Chipper Cash also invested in the round.
Similar to other API-based companies, Thepeer provides payment infrastructure to small and medium-sized businesses.
Disrupt Africa, a local African publication states that in 2021 the African fintechs sector saw its player count go up 17.3% to 573, from the 491 it was in 2019. A majority of these African fintechs offer services such as payments, lending, neobanking, investing, and trading to businesses as well as consumers.
And while they also offer digital wallets to facilitate money transfers, currently there is a lack of interoperability among them, making the process of transferring money from one wallet to another rather difficult.
Thepeer’s API provides an alternative network with which businesses and fintechs can integrate different products into their websites and applications so customers can transfer money easily.
Co-founder and CEO, Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye stated that the startup is planning to launch more functionalities and wallets in more currencies, and also increase hiring as well as investment in product development.
Ononye added that the firm is still focused on product innovation and serving customers operating across various geographies.
The news about the seed round follows that of Thepeer’s pre-seed round, where it raised $220,000 last year from a few angel investors, such as Prosper Otemuyiwa, CTO of Edenlife, and Ezra Olubi, CTO of Paystack,.
Since its launch in August last year, the startup has recorded an average growth of 161% in monthly transactions.
Ononye stated that with the rise in B2B and consumer fintechs across the continent, the startup wants to create a foundation of API-based payments layer with which fintech can move money natively from and to their respective wallets and apps.
Apart from its own offering Send, with which users can send money to other platforms via email addresses or usernames, the startup has also partnered with Flutterwave and launched two more B2B2C products.
Source credit: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/22/thepeer-an-api-based-startup-that-connects-african-businesses-raises-2-1m-led-by-raba-partnership/