ZirooPay raises $11.4 million in Series A Funding; Zrosk Investment Management, a Lagos-based venture capital firm, led the round, including current investors Nordic Venture Fund. Fedha Capital and Exotix Advisory were among the private and institutional funds contributing to the fundraising.
The company revealed that the funds will be used to extend its mobile Point of Sale services for Nigerian shops and expand the company’s payment infrastructure, accelerate expansion, and its personnel. To establish an omnichannel system for merchants, ZirooPay will develop its product suite and include payment channels and alternatives.
Must Read: Cowbell Cyber raises $100M in Funding Capital
Petri Kivinen, a former managing director at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Renaissance Capital; Abiodun Ajai, Bank of America’s director of Sub-Saharan Africa; Kurt Bjorklund, managing partner at Permira; Stephane Kurgan, venture partner at Index Ventures; and Jonas Dromberg, former Bureau chief at Bloomberg, are among the individual investors.
As it works to build an omnichannel system for businesses, ZirooPay said the growth capital would help it extend its product suite and incorporate other payment channels and alternatives.
Must Read: Nigerian Logistics Startup, Kwik raises $2M in Series A Funding.
One of the challenges to the widespread acceptance of card payments at retail outlets, according to Omoniyi Olawale, CEO of ZirooPay, is the high rate of transaction failures due to weak internet connections.
He also added that the company’s mobile app allows small businesses in the retail, agency banking, hospitality, and services sectors to undertake comparable duties, such as tracking sales and managing operations.
“Think about everything that giant supermarket cash registers can do; we provide the same capabilities to small businesses with an Android application and a mobile point-of-sale card reader,” he said.
According to Samson Esemuede, managing director and chief investment officer of Zrosk, the expansion of the African continent’s internet economy has been remarkable.
Must Read: Fintech Startup Yep! Raises $1.5M pre-seed Funding
“ZirooPay has a unique technology advantage (that works without an internet connection) and distribution model that raises the odds of digitizing the offline economy at a unit cost, making the tale extremely compelling,” he said. Although the payment market has become well-resourced and competitive, the white space we see in the digitization of cash is why we are optimistic about the investment’s prospects.”