Payday wants to power the future of work for Africa with $3M seed led by Moniepoint Inc
Summary
Customers in 11 African countries, including Rwanda, where it first established its headquarters due to its business-friendly environment, had access to the platform and could send money to each other. Subsequently, the fintech, which became the first Rwandan company to join Techstars (Toronto program) and soon raised a $1.2 million pre-seed extension, learned that enabling cross-border payments was expensive despite. Payday also offers virtual dollar and naira cards (which allow Nigerian users to purchase goods and services on foreign platforms), currency swaps, payment links, local bill payments and peer-to-peer transfers.These features are commonly provided by other VC-backed B2C fintech apps serving African customers and those in the diaspora, such as Grey, Lemonade Finance, Send by Flutterwave, and Chipper Cash, making the landscape a competitive one where each attempts to outdo the other with speed and better fees or rates.We are building TransferWise for Africa; we want our customers to move money faster with the bank accounts and cards we issue. Theres also the alignment in our goal to provide financial happiness by addressing key international payment pain points with merchants and individuals. Sean Udeke, an exGoldman Sachs and Expedia product manager, works at the fintech as its new head of products, where he is slated to oversee new offerings such as loans and credit cards.Were supporting the future of work by targeting remote workers and freelancers, and we want to be able to study customer and spend behaviors and use that to offer loans, said Ori, who also ran the now-defunct tech outsourcing platform WeJapa.