Large organisations that operate in Africa often have issues with payment collection due to the varying currencies on the continent, differing government policies and fragment payment systems. To remedy this, these organisations have to hire an in-house team to build custom payment solutions.
Providing an alternative for large companies is MoneyHash, an Egyptian US-based fintech company that provides a platform for businesses that want to remove the complexity and effort of building and maintaining a payment infrastructure. MoneyHash has pre-built integrations with prominent payment service providers (PSPs) that cover over 90 payment method integrations in the region.
Founded by Nader Abdelrazik, Mustafa Eid, and Anisha Sekar in 2020, MoneyHash will connect businesses to numerous PSPs, provide a uniform and localised checkout experience, and recover declined payments.
In a text conversation with Nader Abdelrazik, MoneyHash’s CEO and co-founder, Abdelrazik told TechCabal that MoneyHash wants to establish itself as a leading provider of payment solutions.
“MoneyHash’s main goal is to give businesses in the region the ability to upgrade their tech especially regarding such a sensitive piece: payments. We aim to be the leader when it comes to building and maintaining a payment infrastructure, and to do so, our impact has to be empowerment and growth of companies that use us”, he said.
Abdelrazik added that MoneyHash wants to have the same impact Amazon Web Services had with cloud services in the payment sector.
“We are aiming to build a fully agnostic cloud that aggregates all payment APIs, features, and technical capabilities. That way, we make building and maintaining payment functionalities as easy and fast as spinning a new server on AWS. To do so, we invested a lot in our technical modularity, in hiring the right people, and in working collaboratively with our current and potential customers. It is like a company built by everyone involved. Collaboration and learning is key to us”, he said.
MoneyHash’s decision to venture into sub-Saharan Africa is hinged on the payment opportunities and challenges that exist in the region.
“We really stumbled on it by coincidence while consulting for a company on their payment strategy across the region. We just assumed someone must have built a library or something that companies can use as a layer of abstraction.”
“The growing fintech scene from the outside looks impressive, but the real challenge is how businesses will adapt to all these changes and the fragmentation of the market. This was a clear signal for us that this is the perfect time for a layer of abstraction”, he shared.
Abdelrazik added that the opportunity to contribute to the continent’s growth was a defining factor.
“The different payment and fintech avenues in the region are a lot, and the opportunity of non-cash payments in the region is huge. We see massive opportunities for us to be pan-regional, to build corridors between Africa and MENA, and to explore strategic partnerships with BaaS and other key fintech players in the region to offer maximum value.”
MoneyHash is venture backed with $3M in a pre-seed deal from COTU Ventures with participation of multiple African funds such as Venture Platform, Kepple Africa Ventures, The Continent Venture Partners, First Check Africa, and Lofty Capital Inc.
“We continue to be very impressed with the vision and technical execution capability of Nader, Mustafa , Anisha and the rest of the MoneyHash team. We couldn’t have backed a better team to deliver this critical mission of abstracting the headaches from setting up local and international payments for African businesses that want to scale.” said Kola Aina, founding partner of Venture Platform on the expansion.
