Kenyan Fintech Startup Wapi Pay Raises $2.2M Pre-seed in Global Expansion Drive

Two-year-old Kenyan startup Wapi Pay which has offices in China and Singapore has joined the growing club of African startups to attract venture funding today announced that it has raised $2.2 million in what is termed as a non-equity round of pre-seed funding. The firm said its investors included EchoVC and China-based fund MSA Capital, which have invested in Asian unicorns such as Meituan and NIO, and international unicorns such as Nubank and Klarna.

Additional investors include Kepple Africa Ventures. The firm also counts Future Hub, Gobi Ventures, and Transsion Holding as existing investors. Wapi Pay said the funding will help it engage regulators for licensing across Africa and drive growth. It would also allow the company to build value for existing and potential customers by broadening its suite of products.

Wapi Pay was co-founded by brothers Eddie and Paul Ndichu. It wants to scale up global payments and remittances between Africa and Asia. Eddie Ndichu, who doubles up as the company’s CEO, said: “These funds will help Wapi Pay diversify our product range and drive growth so that we can evolve remittances into real-time cross-border payments, starting with Africa and Asia—all while minimising the cost of transactions.”

EchoVC said Wapi Pay is removing friction in an enormous payments market for Africa and powering the circular trade economy. MSA Capital added that Africa to Asia is a large trading corridor overlooked and underserved by tech today and that Wapi Pay was in a sweet spot to build the necessary infrastructure to support its growing trade volumes.

China-Africa trade jumped 27% to $52.1 billion in the first quarter of this year from a year earlier, buoyed by the recovery of economies after the coronavirus pandemic. But traders have to endure high remittance fees of up to 15% of the amount, a waiting period of up to five days, and are exposed to the risk of consistent reversals due to unmatched instructions.

Wapi Pay seeks to reduce the cost to under 3% with a payout the same day. It bypasses traditional payment networks. It also allows users to choose the delivery channels they want such as bank to bank, wallet to wallet, bank to wallet, and wallet to bank options to transfer funds as well as make merchant payments.

The company said that it works with local banks and platforms in China, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Wapi Pay targets to process $500 million in remittances by the end of 2022 and grow the number of registered suppliers and beneficiaries in Asia to 100,000. It also aims to sign up at least 500,000 merchants, traders, and businesses in Africa.