Zazuu, London-based Fintech Secures $2m to Offer Africans Seamless Solutions to Cross-border Payments
Zazuu, an Africa-focused fintech startup, has raised $2 million, which will be crucial in the company’s mission to reduce the inconsistency associated with remittance transactions for Africans.
Zazuu is building a non-biased payment platform for cross-border payment solutions for Africans in the diaspora.
Launch Africa, Founders Factory Africa, Hoaq Club, Tinie Tempah, Jason Njoku, CEO of IrokoTV, Babs Ogundeyi, CEO of Kuda Bank, and other angel investors took part in the investment round.
The business also wants to give Africans a smarter way to send money by letting them select from a variety of local money transfer companies.
About Zazuu
Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be one of the most expensive regions for cross-border transactions, according to a World Bank analysis.
And when Kay Akinwunmi (CEO), Korede Fanilola (COO), Tola Alade (CDO), and Tosin Ekolie (CTO), four African-born entrepreneurs in the diaspora with varying professional backgrounds, noticed a similar occurrence when dealing with institutional biases like unfair remittance practices, they decided to collaborate to solve the issue.
In 2018, I sent about $3000 back home to Nigeria. I thought I got the best deal on that transaction until about two weeks later when someone informed me I could have saved up to $30 in fees on that transaction if I had used a different provider. I was livid. We all have experiences like this where we only discovered in hindsight that we had lost more than we should on transactions back home simply by choosing the right provider.
Korede Fanilola, Zazuu’s Chief Operation Officer
Zazuu evolved from a straightforward information chatbot that alerted users to daily rates on Facebook and Telegram groups to a UK-based organization with an FCA license that has users in eight nations throughout North America and Europe.
The business just released a feature called Pay with Zazuu that lets users carry out transactions inside the app.
Without leaving the app, users may utilize the tools to look for, compare, and conduct transfers with these providers.
Nearly 100,000 consumers have utilized the current version of our Search and Compare tool to find the cheapest prices for their corridors because of this new functionality.
However, as of right now, only senders in the United Kingdom and recipients in Nigeria and Ghana can use the Zazuu service.
The plan for us is growth. We want to scale our solution as quickly as possible. We’re working on getting licenses that allow us offer our service to users in other European countries before the end of the year. We’ll also be concurrently improving the product with new features that ensure that everyone sending money to Africa gets the best money transfer experience.
Korede Fanilola, the company’s COO
Future plans for Zazuu
Nigeria receives the most remittances from Sub-Saharan Africa, hence secure cross-border payment options are required for faster transaction times.
Most of these investors agree that Zazuu’s vision includes a more equal society for Nigerians, a fair financial framework for the ecosystem, more open pricing, and greater cross-border money movement throughout Africa.
We’re more than a payments company. We want a build a better financial ecosystem for Africans in the diaspora. That means, more than just helping people complete transactions, we want to better help them with better access to financial instruments like credit both home and abroad in the future. The aim is to build a completely non-biased financial wellbeing for African immigrants across the world
Kay Akinwunmi, CEO of Zazuu
Despite the remittance sector’s overabundance of options, the issues of transparency and financial inclusion have not been resolved. These issues are what Zazuu seeks to address.
