In case you are yet to get the memo, payment is the next big thing as far Nigeria’s tech ecosystem is concerned and the decision of Iyinoluwa Aboyeji to leave Andela – a company he co-founded – to launch Flutterwave a payment company is the latest argument in support of Nigeria’s growing payment sector.
There are lots of payment startups already in Nigeria yet the number continues to increase suggesting that the market is very large enough to accommodate everybody. I didn’t make this up, available data affirmed that about a billion Naira worth of transactions are made via PoS and other digital channels monthly in Nigeria. Any tech company that can take commission on these transactions will quickly and easily become a unicorn.
The common denominator for these companies is their ability to make their services to be easily accessible and less expensive in comparison to previously existing ones. Furthermore, many of them are able to provide SMEs with innovative solutions that would make their businesses succeed.
Here are the 5 new payment companies and products in Nigeria that have bright market prospects.
Aboyeji’s Flutterwave is the official new kid on the block. According to the company’s claims, the company which is already live in Nigeria and Ghana, has been in private beta for some weeks, with Aboyeji working on it in his spare time while at Andela. Aboyeji revealed that business took off quicker than expected so he had to go full time. According to him, Flutterwave has already transacted more than $20 million to date working with clients including Uber Nigeria, Access Bank, Paystack, and Page Microfinance.
The company has already received undisclosed seed funding from Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator, South Africa’s CRE VC, and VCFintech, a Little Rock, Arkansas based accelerator which is backed by major fintech firm, FIS.
This is yet another Nigerian payment startup with bright prospects. It allows Nigerian merchants to accept MasterCard, Visa, and Verve cards from anyone, anywhere in the world. Consumers do not need to sign up to use Paystack, all that is required is a Mastercard, Visa or Verve debit card to pay on Paystack merchant sites. For merchants, they are expected to sign up followed by instant access to test Paystack’s environment and APIs on the go. To integrate Paystack in order to receive on their site, merchants will submit a request and upload business details for verification.
Founded by two graduates of Nigeria’s Babcock University, Paystack, just like Flutterwave, has joined Y Combinator and has received $120,000 seed funding.
Entrepreneurs are already lauding the company for making payment integration easier and cheaper for merchants in comparison to services offered by Interswitch.
“Paystack’s prospects are exciting, Interswitch is so last millennium, perfect timing for my startup,” said Ogonna Okafor, an entrepreneur.
Amplify is another new generation Nigerian payment startup that officially launched in June with focus on recurrent payments making it Nigeria’s first company with such focus. Amplify is helping Nigerian businesses to accept recurring payments online. The name Amplify may be new, but the company isn’t. It spent months testing its services under the name SlushPay.
“Using Amplify, businesses can accept payments within minutes from customers in over 100 countries,” the company said in a statement.
While many may argue that recurrent payment is still unpopular in Nigeria, Segun Adeyemi, CEO of the company argues otherwise.
“Many businesses in Nigeria accept recurring payments, but it is surprisingly difficult to accept and manage these payments, they improvise with methods like post-dated cheques, regular transfers and direct debit mandates,” he said.
According to him, last year, Nigerians paid more than $1.3 billion in automated direct debits alone.
“We built Amplify to make setting up and managing recurring payments simple for subscription businesses, lending companies, insurance companies, and others,” he said.
Essentially, what Amplify does is it provides a suite of tools to help businesses who have a need to accept and manage recurring payments. The startup allows businesses to quickly accept automatic recurring payments from all over the world using Amplify’s payment gateway.
KongaPay
Nigeria’s ecommerce giant Konga saw the writings on the wall early enough when it decided to introduce KongaPay – a service that is said to have disruptive potentials. The company was able to legally roll out payment services after it had acquired Zinternet – a company that has mobile payments license.
During the official launch, Konga said the rollout of KongaPay will facilitate the initiation and completion of transactions in a seamless manner.
Shola Adekoya, Konga.com’s CEO said “Konga is launching KongaPay payment solution because we want Nigerians and Africans at large to experience the best of service at their convenience. This means we constantly evolve to be more relevant to customers and society.”
With KongaPay, a merchant will take a photo of any item he or she want to sell and the company will generate a payment QR code for the seller. Just like that, merchants will be able to share the QR code on their favorite social media sites.
Features of KongaPay are: Instant refunds; Every phone is a POS; Pay with just your phone number and 4-digit PIN; Set up payment subscriptions and recurring payments; Send money to any Nigerian phone number in your contacts, without asking for an account number; Fully customizable iOS, Android and Web SDKs to enable merchants integrate and customize as necessary; Pay offline. Just show your QR code at any participating merchant store; Me-Commerce – a 1st in the world, where a user can create a shareable QR code for an item and get it out into social networks, thus enabling payments on Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp – all through KongaPay
Even though the only major drive for KongaPay is the special discount that users of the service gets when they use it to pay on Konga and the company is yet to extend it to non-Konga platforms, the fact that it has the service is a good way to insure its future.
NetPlusDotCom’s STORM mPOS app
Etisalat Nigeria is actively involved in this innovative inventory, store management and self-service ticketing solution via mobile point of sale (mPOS) system. The inventory application allows for inventory management and sales tracking; it enables the merchant to track both e-commerce and in-store sales via the same channel. Unlike regular POS services that many merchants cannot afford due to their high cost owing to the expensive applications apart from the hardware, merchants will not incur additional costs for using STORM app.
STORM app works seamlessly with the mPOS device and customers can make payments from the app itself. With the backend inventory management solution, users can manage inventory levels of the store as they are being purchased by the customers. It is integrated with a certified mobile POS device and offers adequate controls to prevent loopholes thus offering a low-cost solution that puts the user at the cutting edge of technology – it also provides an alternative solution to customers.
STORM eases cash collection, counting and deposit into bank account, its mPoS system can be used for payment and by this it enables merchants to reduce customer’s waiting time by enabling more distribution points – this is in addition to its ability to receive all forms of electronic payment. The merchant is also able to electronically capture information of the customers for future marketing and loyalty drive.
