Paul Edwards, Former MTN CEO Receives Series A Funding for New Fintech Startup
Paul Edwards, the former CEO of MTN Group, has raised a series-A round of capital for his new fintech business VantagePay.
According to TechCentral, Crossfin Holdings, a Blue Garnet Ventures affiliate, has purchased a “significant share” in the company for an unknown value.
VantagePay, formerly Vantage Africa Limited, was founded in 2018 with the mission of providing payment and technology services throughout Africa. It has offices in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, and London, and it offers payment solutions to Ghanaian banks, telecoms companies, and fintech companies.
“Given the comparatively high mobile phone penetration combined with a very low penetration of financial services, Africa represents a big potential for mobile payments,” said Edwards in a statement.
“VantagePay has used the lessons learned from EMP and nations like China to establish a business model that allows for cost-effective, deep penetration of payment services into African markets,” he said.
Crossfin CEO Dean Sparrow stated that the company’s goal with this financing is to swiftly grow across Africa. Ethos Mid-Market Fund and Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital are among Crossfin’s investors.
“It also has a very seasoned management team with a track record of building successful pan-African payments companies,” added Sparrow.
“We believe Crossfin is an ideal partner for VantagePay, and that they will stand out in a crowded payments market.” “We’re excited to take advantage of the many identified synergies with our portfolio firms while also aiding VantagePay in realizing its objective of being a top pan-African payments facilitator,” he added.
According to IT-ONLINE, VantagePay’s Co-founder and CEO Barry Lobel stated that the company has developed a premier cloud-based payments platform to serve the large latent demand for access to trustworthy financial services in Africa.
“Our platform’s modular architecture allows for a lot of synergy and complementary offers between VantagePay and Crossfin’s portfolio firms,” said Lobel.
