Revio raises $5.2m to simplify payment operations in Africa

By Delisha Fernandes

‍Revio, a payment orchestration platform helping merchants to optimise their order to cash lifecycle, has announced a seed investment round of $5.2 million.

The funding round was led by FinTech fund QED Investors, joined by Partech and continued participation from Revio’s existing investors, Speedinvest, RaliCap, and Everywhere VC. The company plans to use the capital to further grow Revio’s coverage across Africa, deepen its routing logic, and expand its capabilities to add more value to customers.

“Digital payments are growing rapidly across Africa, projected to reach $146 billion in 2023, before taking into account ~$500 billion in mobile money transactions,” said co-founder and CEO, Ruaan Botha. “However, there are unique market challenges and opportunities in how payments are made and collected on the continent. The most glaring is the immense fragmentation of the payments ecosystem, with more than 280 licensed payment service providers, 42 currencies, and the unique consumer payment cultures that exist.”

Through its single payment API and orchestration platform, Revio creates new opportunities for merchants, payment providers, and platforms to work together to increase customer acquisition, success rates, and retention. Beyond abstracting the initial complexity of multiple payment integrations and onboarding processes, the company helps global and local merchants optimise their end-to-end payment processes, through features such as intelligent transaction routing, automated failover and retries, and real-time customer engagement workflows.

“We have a strong conviction that payments in Africa hasn’t been fully solved. Revio is building a platform that can unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent, and help both global and local merchants reach new customer segments. We are excited to back the exceptional team that has proven they can execute even in tough market conditions, and localize very strongly to win enterprise customers,” said Gbenga Ajayi, Partner and Africa Lead at QED Investors.