Wapi Pay, a Kenyan startup has raised $2.2M pre-seed for cross-border payments between Africa and Asia. The $2.2 million pre-seed investment will be vital to scaling up global payments and remittances between Africa and Asia.
Wapi Pay, a payments gateway that enables African businesses to receive and send money from Asia via mobile money platforms and bank accounts, was founded in 2019 by brothers Paul and Eddie Ndichu. Since then, they have carved a market for themselves by facilitating payments between both extreme remittance worlds of Africa and Asia.
Despite the growing trade relationship between the Africa and Asia, the remittance cost is still high and Wapi is doing a great job to create a window to alleviate these fees. With Wapi Pay, you can now process payments within a day and pay charges as low as 3%.
In the first quarter of 2021, trade between Africa and China increased by 27% to $52.1 billion, compared to the same period in 2020. Despite the pandemic’s economic recovery, African merchants still find it difficult to send and receive money. These expenditures might be as high as 20% in some circumstances, particularly in Southern African countries. The wait period can be excruciating, with some customers waiting up to a week for payment to be completed.
The CEO in a statement said that “Wapi Pay bypasses traditional payment networks, optimizing efficiency and cost for our customers. Users 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, with settlement done within 24 hours.”
Wapi Pay plans to use the funds to engage regulators in Africa for licensing, as well as scalability, product, and regional expansion.
“These funds will help Wapi Pay diversify our products range and drive growth so that we can evolve remittances into real-time global cross-border payments, starting with Africa and Asia. All while minimizing the cost of transactions, it needs to be as easy as sending M-PESA,” Eddie added.
