FUNDING | South African Fintech, Revio, Secures $5.2 Million in Seed Funding to Fix the Fragmented African Payment Ecosystem

Revio, a South African payment orchestration platform that assists merchants in streamlining their order-to-cash processes, has disclosed a seed funding round totaling $5.2 million.

This funding round was spearheaded by QED Investors, with participation from:

• Partech, as well as ongoing contributions from Revio’s existing investors, including
• Speedinvest
• RaliCap, and
• Everywhere VC

The investment aims to support the company’s expansion efforts throughout Africa and enhance its operational capabilities.

The startup, which in 2022 secured $1.1 million in seed funding, is a payment orchestration platform, with a focus on Africa, designed to simplify payment operations for merchants. Its aim is to reduce complexity, lower costs, and mitigate risks associated with payments, ultimately helping merchants reach and retain a larger customer base.

Through its single PCI-compliant platform and API, Revio empowers both global and local merchants to tap into a wide array of over 70 payment methods. Additionally, they can establish customizable routing and retry protocols while actively engaging with customers throughout the payment process.

Revio intends to leverage this capital infusion to continue expanding its presence throughout Africa. Additionally, the company aims to enhance its routing logic and broaden its capabilities to provide even greater value to its customers. As part of its growth strategy, Revio will actively seek out top talent in both African and key international markets to support its expansion efforts.

“Digital payments are growing rapidly across Africa, projected to reach $146 billion in 2023, before taking into account $500 billion in mobile money transactions,” said Co-Founder and CEO, Ruaan Botha.

“However, there are unique market challenges and opportunities in how payments are made and collected on the continent. The most glaring is the immense fragmentation of the payments ecosystem, with more than 280 licensed payment service providers, 42 currencies, and the unique consumer payment cultures that exist.”

Moreover, the Co-Founder and COO Nicole Dunn, identifies that a large majority of the consumer base is still coming online and does not have high discretionary incomes, forcing them to closely control their cash flow.

“The result is that both local and global merchants struggle to reach customers and collect revenue, with high cost of customer acquisition, painful and complex integration processes, and high rates of payment failures,” she said.

Gbenga Ajayi, who serves as a partner and Africa lead at QED Investors, expressed a firm belief that the challenges related to payments in Africa have not yet been completely addressed or resolved.

“Revio is building a platform that can unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent, and help both global and local merchants reach new customer segments. 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,” he said.