Payday secures $3m seed funding
Payday, the pan-African neobank providing global accounts in USD, EUR and GBP to Africans, has announced a $3 million seed round. The funding was led by Moniepoint Inc., and included participation from HoaQ, DFS Lab’s Stellar Africa Fund, Ingressive Capital Fund II, as well as angel investors Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of MFS Africa, and Tola Onayemi, CEO of Norebase. These new backers join a group of existing follow-on investors.
This brings Payday’s total investment to date to $5.1 million, following a $2 million-plus pre-seed round in 2021. In an oversubscribed round, the new capital raised will be deployed to secure operational licensing in the United Kingdom and Canada, while building out operations in the United Kingdom, where the company has recently been incorporated. Funding will also be used to boost talent acquisition.
In June 2021, Favour Ori launched Payday, a Rwandan company that made history by becoming the first of its kind to join Techstars. Payday was developed to support African remote workers, freelancers and digital professionals by providing frictionless, borderless payments and enabling global payment processing from over 130 countries. The startup caters to individuals both on the African continent and in the diaspora, allowing them to send and receive money in USD, GBP, EUR, and 20 additional currencies. This service enables Africans to work remotely for international organisations and receive payment in their currency of choice, regardless of location.
Presently operating in Nigeria, Rwanda, and the UK, Payday serves over 330,000 users by offering virtual Visa and Mastercards, which can be easily generated through the Payday App. With a rapidly growing user base, the neobank adds more than 100,000 new users monthly and handles an average of 40,000 transactions daily, resulting in millions of USD processed each day. In February 2023, Payday became a payment partner for Starlink, a SpaceX-operated venture, allowing Nigerian and Rwandan citizens to seamlessly purchase Starlink routers.