Wapi Pay raises $2.2m to digitise Africa-Asia trade payments
Wapi Pay, a fintech company based in Singapore and headquartered in Kenya, has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding to scale up global payments and remittances between Africa and Asia. The investors included EchoVC, China-based global fund MSA Capital and Kepple Africa Ventures.
Existing investors are Future Hub, Gobi Ventures and Transsion Holding.
Eddie Ndichu, co-founder at Wapi Pay, commented on this funding milestone: “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 minimising the cost of transactions, it needs to be as easy as sending M-PESA.”
EchoVC commented, “Wapi Pay is an exciting fintech that is removing friction in an enormous payments space for Africa and powering the circular trade economy. As the symbiotic relationship between Africa and Asia deepens, Wapi Pay’s ecosystem of services will become increasingly critical to bridge and drive economic value between the two continents.”
MSA Capital commented, “Africa to Asia is a large trading corridor overlooked and underserved by tech today. We believe Wapi Pay is the best team to build the necessary infrastructure to support its growing trade volumes. We are excited to support with our extensive China fintech network and playbook.”
Wapi Pay focuses on the Africa-Asia remittance corridor. China-Africa trade jumped 27% to $52.1 billion in the first quarter of 2021 compared with 2020, buoyed by the recovery of economies after the coronavirus pandemic.
Today traders have to endure high remittances fees of up to 15% of the amount, waiting periods of up to five days and are exposed the high risk of consistent reversals due to unmatched instructions. With Wapi Pay, the cost reduces to below 3% and same day payouts.
Wapi Pay targets to process $500 million in remittances by the end of 2022, grow the number of registered suppliers and beneficiaries in Asia to 100,000; and sign up at least 500,000 merchants, traders and businesses in Africa.
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