Bizao secures €8 million series A for pan-African expansion

Bizao, a fintech that facilitates payments for both local and international businesses operating in Africa has secured €8 million series A funding to accelerate its expansion across the continent and invest in the design of new lines of products and services.

"We have spent the last few years working closely with our partners (telecoms operators, banks and mobile wallet providers) to improve our products and services in line with our customer requirements," Aurélien Delort-Duval, Founder and CEO of Bizao said in a statement shared with Benjamindada.com.

Delort-Duval added that "this round of financing will enable us to design new product lines for high-potential vertically integrated organisations, expand in new markets and grow the team across all our offices."

Launched in 2019, Bizao facilitates, in a transparent and secure manner, the processing of end-to-end payment flows to and from the main digital payment systems in Africa (airtime, mobile money wallets, credit cards). Within 3 years, Bizao has expanded its operations in 10 African countries (Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Democratic Republic of  Congo, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo, Gabon) and has built a robust and cutting-edge infrastructure that processes over 350 million payment requests per month.

Bizao’s modular and scalable platform allows clients to collect and issue payments online and in-stores via point-of-sale (POS). The technology used by Bizao ensures end-to-end transactions traceability and is hence, up to the latest standards of banking and finance regulation to prevent fraud and money laundering. This, ultimately, enables Bizao to deepen its relationship with its partners.

The funding round was led by AfricInvest Financial Inclusion Vehicle (AfricInvest FIVE), a leading private equity company with operations in Africa, Adelie, a multi-stage venture capital fund focused on technology companies and Seedstars Africa Ventures, an Africa-focused early-stage venture capital fund.

"Through our equity investments in financial institutions including banks, insurance companies and high potential fintechs, we support the acceleration of universal access to financial services. Our investment in Bizao is in line with this high-impact strategy aiming to support financial inclusion in Africa.” said Omar Bekkali, Partner at AfricInvest.

With more than 600 million mobile money accounts, Africa is the ultimate place for mobile payments. Yet 90% of transactions are still settled in cash. "Bizao tackles a major societal issue and can help unlock African trade potential. To achieve this goal, Bizao leverages its payment hub which is one of the most technically robust," Tamim El Zein,  Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures said. "In addition, Bizao’s African internationalization strategy matches that of the companies we support."

“It is the future of financial services that is orchestrating itself in Africa; mobile money has enabled more than 60% of the population on the continent to finally have access to basic financial services. The penetration rate of mobile on the continent is close to 100% and we are witnessing a growth in the use of credit cards. We are convinced that a platform combining all these payment methods has exceptional growth potential.” said Jean-Manuel Costa,  Managing Partner at Adelie.