Ghanaian startups, Zeepay and Moneyboxx, clinched investment deals at the Angel Fair Africa that held in Accra, Ghana.
Zeepay, a mobile money aggregator, will get $200,000 in investment fund while Moneyboxx is expecting $20 million. The investment deal for Moneyboxx was with Nubuke Investments, led by Ghanaian financier and investment banker, Tutu Agyare, who serves as its Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer.
Moneyboxx is a lending facility built around mobile technology that allays the risk associated with lending by working hand-in-hand with human resource departments to provide loans to their employees. These loans are secured by the employees’ salaries. The investment that Moneyboxx will receive from Nubuke is expected to deliver in the form of capital infusion, systems upgrade and corporate leadership expertise. It has encouraged Moneyboxx to go on “a recruitment drive across different business sectors with an expectation of 50,000 signups by the end of the first quarter of 2016.”
According to Andrew Appiah, founder of Zeepay, the investment will be used to complete the apps’ current integration with mobile network operators and banks, and it will enable them launch. Currently, Zeepay has a direct partnership with Airtel Money and TIGO Cash. The partnership allows them work together “to build a payment ecosystem for mobile money, where all players with wallets leveraging NFC (near field communication) technology can pay for goods and services at point of sale.”
Andrew Appiah says the idea for Zeepay was “borne out of my frustrations with PoS and ATM networks not working when you need them to work the most.” Talking to Russell Southwood of Smart Monkey TV, Andrew added that “The tipping point was at the new Tang Hotel opening, we ordered a lovely meal and after dining I gave them my rugged overused card to pay and after 10 attempts it doesn’t work. Well, the sad part is that the Hotel Manager that day decided that he would have to hold my wife and children till I found an ATM that would work and bring back money to pay. That was the deal breaker for me. I got an ATM, paid him and the rest is history.”
