According to a statement shared with TechCabal today, Thepeer, a Nigerian tech infrastructure startup that facilitates frictionless wallet transfers between businesses, has raised a $2.1 million seed round.
Thepeer was created in August 2021 as a solution to the expensive and time-consuming transfer of money across mobile wallets by Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye (CEO) and Michael Okoh (CTO).
Thepeer is an API-based business that enables its clients—mostly small and medium-sized enterprises and fintechs—to permit their own consumers to fund their accounts from other businesses, transfer money across their various wallets, and pay for products conveniently using their wallets.
The rise of fintech businesses on the continent, which can also be attributed to increased venture capital funding, has made it necessary for Thepeer to build out its infrastructure. Most of these businesses, regardless of the type of financial service they offer—payments, lending, investing, trading, or neobanking—have digital wallets. As consumers and companies use these fintech products, they’ve found that switching from one fintech’s digital wallet to another is challenging. The founders of Thepeer decided to create Thepeer in order to address this infrastructure gap after learning about the absence of digital wallet interoperability.
“Today, there are nearly 600 fintechs across the continent, most of which operate siloed wallets. Our goal is to make it possible to connect and make payments from any wallet. We are building an operating system so that businesses can offer more services to their customers,” Thepeer’s CEO Ononye said in a statement.
The Raba Partnership, which has made numerous investments in startup African infrastructure payments API firms like Flutterwave, Stitch, and BVNK, is the lead investor in this round. Rali cap Ventures, BYLD Ventures, Timon Capital, Musha Ventures, Sunu, Uncovered Fund, and other African fintechs like Chipper Cash and Stitch are among the additional investors who took part in this round.
A variety of business- and consumer-facing products from Thepeer enable smooth money transfers between companies and their clients. Customers of various businesses can fund their wallets using Direct Charge, while those who use Checkout can buy things online from any retailer that takes Thepeer.
Send, its most recent offering, was released three months ago and enables companies to send and receive money from one another via a dashboard. Thepeer reported that since Send’s debut, its monthly transaction volume has increased over 65 times to double-digit million dollars. The business added that it had experienced average MoM transaction growth of 161 percent since its inception in August 2021 through Q1-22.
According to Ononye, Thepeer generates revenue by charging users 0.5 percent (limited at $25,000) for Direct Charge and Checkout transactions and $0.01 to companies for each consumer transaction. The business added that teletherapy platform Nguvu Health and international wallet Eversend both use its technology.
“One amazing thing about Thepeer is that it has made it easier for people to pay for therapy on Nguvu Health app, which makes it easy and affordable for Africans to access therapy from their smartphones. Our users now have options with Thepeer’s integration with other fintech wallets where they can pay for therapy,” Nguvu Health’s co-founder and CEO, Joshua Koya, said in a statement.
“The opportunity that Thepeer is addressing reminded us of the fragmented card and mobile money payments landscape Flutterwave identified 6 years ago,” Raba Partnership’s founder George Rzepecki said in a statement.
“Today, with the proliferation of consumer and B2B fintechs across Africa, Thepeer is building a foundational API-based payments layer where fintechs can enable money movement natively from within their respective wallets and apps.”
It secured a $220,000 pre-seed round of funding from angel investors less than a year prior, including co-founder and CTO of Paystack Ezra Olubi and co-founder and CTO of Edenlife Prosper Otemuyiwa.
Thepeer will use this new cash to extend to other African nations, such as Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt, according to Ononye, who currently only operates in Nigeria.
