South African Payment Startup Revio Raises $5.2 Million Seed Round to Expand Its Offerings Across Africa

Revio, a South African payment orchestration platform that helps merchants to optimize their order to cash lifecycle, has announced the raise of a $5.2 million seed investment round, to expand its offerings and capabilities across Africa.

The funding round was led by leading Fintech firm QED investors, which was joined by Partech, and continued participation from Revio’s existing investors which include Speedinvest, Ralicap, and Everywhere VC.

Revio announced that the seed fund will be used to further expand its coverage across Africa, deepen its routing logic, and expand its capabilities to add more value to customers. Also, the company will be scouting for top talent across the container and in key markets to support its growth.

Co-founder and CEO of Revio, Ruaan Botha said, 

“Digital payments are growing rapidly across Africa, projected to reach US$146 billion in 2023, before taking into account US$500 billion in mobile money transactions. 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 license payment service providers, 42 currencies, and the unique consumer payment cultures that exist.”

Also speaking on its investment in Revio, partner and Africa lead at QED investors Gbenga Ajayi said,

“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”.

In Africa, reports reveal that 2-3 out of every 10 payments fail, compared to the 0.7 global average. Reasons for this include the fragmented payments landscape, higher dispute rates, invalid or expired card details, false-positive fraud checks, multiple or dormant accounts, and insufficient funds. 

This high failure rate results in billions of dollars in lost revenue. In Africa alone, an estimated $14 billion in recurring revenue is uncollected each year, and the continent has a 320% higher churn rate than mature markets.

Founded in 2020, Revio launched to assist companies in streamlining their order-to-cash lifecycle while handling issues brought on by employing various payment options via its APIs. 

Through its API, merchants can connect to more than 70 payment methods and service providers, giving them access to transaction routing, automated failover and retries, and real-time customer engagement workflows to increase payment success rates. 

In addition, Revio recently unveiled a revenue recovery use case based on the realization that payment failure in Africa isn’t always due to technical difficulties, it might also be the consequence of insufficient funds or an abandoned authorization. 

To that end, the platform drives real-time action via channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push, notifications to re-engage consumers in the checkout process and provide them with a more convenient payment method.

Revio which has seen its revenue increase by 1,000% in the past year, also plans to target global retailers servicing the African market during its next development phase.

The company has an impressive global reach with a presence in over 40 countries, and over 100 customers in 5+ markets. Revio is trusted by some of Africa’s largest brands and fastest-growing startups which include MTN, Standard Bank, Innovation Group, Alpha Direct, OLDMUTUAL, Flutterwave, and WeconnectU amongst others.

Currently, the startup is helping more than 100

customers increase their revenue through increased payment success rates, customer retention, and lifetime value. 

Locally grounded but globally relevant, Revio aims to be the go-to revenue recovery and growth partner for businesses across emerging markets.