In another major funding round for a South African fintech, Ozow has raised $48 million (around R750 million) in a series B funding round led by Tencent. Other than the Chinese tech giant, the investment round also includes Endeavor Catalyst and Endeavor Harvest Fund.
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“The latest fundraising will support Ozow’s efforts to transform the banking ecosystem and create greater financial access for the underbanked. It will also assist Ozow in cementing its position as one of the leading payment providers on the continent,” the company said in a statement.
“We’re also heavily focused on expanding our product offering. This will largely be driven through the development of new products, as well as a strong focus on strategic investments that include mergers and acquisitions.”
Ozow is planning on expanding into further into Africa, and the funding round will help it establish itself in new markets around the continent. The company is now processing more than R1.5 billion in transactions every month locally, across its wide network of merchants. It works with major retailers, including Shoprite Group and Takealot, as well as MTN, Vodacom and Uber.
On a call with TechCrunch, Ozow CEO Thomas Pays said that before Ozow, manual EFT processes were the popular options to carry out transactions online in the country. At the time, most fintechs and banks did not recognize the need for using bank payments to facilitate online transactions.
Pays launched Ozow to automate the manual EFT process consumers used to pay across e-commerce, point-of-sale, e-billing or P2P methods. According to Pays, he wanted Ozow to “make it seamless for consumers to pay in three clicks.”
“When you looked at e-commerce, point of sale, e-billing or P2P payment seven years ago, it was always a fragmented market. For example, if I want a point-of-sale device, I need to go to a company like Yoco. If I want to accept payments via card on my e-commerce site, I need to go to a PayU,” the CEO stated.
“What we wanted to address was a central platform that could basically provide solutions to e-commerce, point of sale, e-billing and peer to peer payment.”
