ZirooPay, a Lagos and Helsinki-based startup that develops mobile POS payment systems designed to facilitate mobile payments has raised $11.4 million Series A round to expand its payment infrastructure, accelerating growth and growing its team.
The funding round was led by Lagos-based VC fund, Zrosk Investment Management and also involved participation from existing investors, Nordic Venture Fund. Other private and institutional funds such as Fedha Capital and Exotix Advisory also partook in the funding.
Individual investors include Petri Kivinen, the former managing director at Deutsche Bank; Morgan Stanley and Renaissance Capital; Abiodun Ajai, the director, Sub-Saharan Africa of Bank of America; Kurt Bjorklund, managing partner at Permira; Stephane Kurgan, venture partner at Index Ventures; and Jonas Dromberg, former Bureau chief at Bloomberg.
The company said the growth funding will help ZirooPay expand its product suite and include additional payment channels and options as it looks to build out an omnichannel system for merchants.
What they are saying
Omoniyi Olawale, CEO, ZirooPay pointed out that one of the problems to the mass adoption of card payments at retail locations is the rate of transaction failures as a result of poor internet connection.
He also explained that its mobile application allows small businesses across the retail, agency banking, hospitality and services sectors to perform similar tasks, such as tracking sales and managing business operations.
He said, “Think about everything that the cash registers seen in big supermarkets can do; with an Android application and a mobile point-of-sale card reader, we provide that same functionality to small businesses.
Samson Esemuede, the managing director and chief investment officer of Zrosk said the growth in the online economy of the African continent has been remarkable.
He said, “ZirooPay has a patented technology advantage (that works without an internet connection) and distribution model that significantly increases the odds of digitizing the offline economy at a unit cost that makes the story particularly compelling. The payment space has become well-resourced and competitive, but the white space we see in the digitization of cash is the reason we are optimistic about the outlook for this investment.”