Bizao, a fintech developing a Payments Hub for local and international companies in Africa, is raising €8 million in Series A to accelerate its geographic expansion in several countries on the continent and invest in the design of new product lines and services.
Launched in 2019, Bizao is a fintech that allows companies to process payment flows from and to all the main digital payment systems in Africa (telephone or airtime credit, mobile wallets, etc.) transparently and in the best security standards. money and credit card). In 3 years, Bizao has deployed its operations in ten African countries (Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Mali, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo, Gabon) and has built a technological infrastructure robust processing more than 350 million payment requests per month.
Thanks to its modular and scalable platform, Bizao allows its customers to collect and issue payments online and at points of sale via payment terminals. Ensuring end-to-end traceability of transactions, the technology developed makes it possible to meet the growing requirements of banks and regulators in the fight once morest terrorism and anti-money laundering, allowing Bizao to deepen trusted partnerships with these players.
“We have spent the last few years working closely with our partners (telecom operators, banks and mobile wallet providers) to improve our products and services in line with the requirements of our customers. This proximity to the various market players has enabled us to multiply by almost 20 the flows processed by our platform over the last 12 months. This fundraising will allow us to design new product lines for very high-potential verticals, expand our activities in new countries and strengthen our recruitment policy,” explains Aurélien DelortDuval, founder and CEO of Bizao.
This round table was led by Africlnvest, a major player in Private Equity in Africa via its financial inclusion vehicle Financial Inclusion Vehicle “FIVE”, Adelie, a multi-stage technology investment fund and Seedstars Africa Ventures, a venture fund dedicated to early-stage startups in Africa.
«Faced with a deficiency in the interoperability schemes of electronic means of payment in Africa, which is hampering the mass adoption of mobile finance, Bizao is providing an adequate response that will facilitate affordable access to a wide range of transactional financial services for the benefit of underbanked populations as well as small and medium enterprises. This ambition to converge and connect the different payment channels used (mobile wallets, bank cards, and telephone credit) via the Bizao platform, resonates perfectly with the high-impact strategy of the Africlnvest-FIVE fund, which supports financial inclusion in Africa. through equity investments in financial institutions including banks, insurance companies and high-potential fintechs, in order to accelerate their growth.” says Omar Bekkali, Partner at Africlnvest
«It is the future of financial services that is being played out in Africa; the advent of mobile money has enabled more than 60% of the continent’s inhabitants to finally have access to basic financial services. The penetration rate of mobile telephony on the continent is close to 100% and we are witnessing a relative growth in the use of bank cards. We are convinced that a platform combining all these payment methods has exceptional growth potential.says Jean-Manuel Costa, managing partner at Adelie.
« With more than 600 million Mobile Money accounts, Africa is the mobile payment continent par excellence. Yet 90% of transactions are still made in cash. Bizao responds to a major societal issue that can help unlock African trade potential. The Bizao Hub is one of the most technically robust for this and its African internationalization strategy corresponds to that of the companies we support.», Analyzes Tamim El Zein, partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures.
