Faruk Success Rufai of Feedxpay is here to lend a helping hand to African businesses, making international payments a breeze while ensuring a steady supply of liquidity for financial solutions.
Navigating international payments poses a significant challenge for African businesses, with fluctuating exchange rates and complex regulatory requirements complicating the process. For many startups in the international payment space, issuing cards and multi-currency wallets to help drive payment volume and grow customer base, this problem also affects them as they are unable to meet the liquidity demand, resulting in a 153 billion naira loss in the first quarter of 2024 (using Nigeria as a case study).
Cross-border payments can take as long as 4-14 days, but Faruk and his team, with a combined experience of more than 15 years facilitating international payments, assert that Feedxpay’s solution ensures same-day settlement.
The team also states that the average liquidity supply time typically spans from a day to two, making it difficult for financial solutions to mitigate exchange volatility losses and take advantage of their exchange rate gains. However, Feedxpay’s solution reduces this time to as little as 10 minutes to 1 hour, making it easier for them to provide solutions for their customers.
Feedxpay isn’t just about solving payment puzzles. They’re also on a mission to tackle liquidity woes, ensuring businesses stay afloat and thrive.
Feedxpay provides USD, EUR, GBP, CAD, and RMB among other currencies. Today, they assist numerous startups, SMEs, and large corporations in converting millions of dollars per month, opening bank accounts, and making payments all on one platform. Feedxpay is already powering some cross-border solutions and providing liquidity supply as a service to some competitors as they now leverage our platform, Faruk said.
“The ability to make cross-border payments faster and settle on time is directly proportional to multinational business success rates in Africa,” Faruk told the TechCabal team. Starting his career in import and export, he has firsthand experience of this problem. “My first business in Africa took a hit because of my inability to pay my suppliers in China and the USA on time, leading to slow delivery rates to my customers,” Faruk adds. “I’m passionate about solving this problem because I know too many businesses that have problems due to this.”
Feedxpay makes revenue by charging transaction fees on corporate virtual accounts created and exchange rates on each currency conversion made.
Feedxpay’s rapid entry into the $1.5 trillion cross-border market has not been without its challenges. According to Faruk, Feedxpay has struggled to find talent to build its solution. “Operators with localized domain knowledge are scarce,” he said.
While Feedxpay’s plans are ambitious, the startup operates in a field rocked by regulatory and compliance issues, costing businesses potential shutdowns if they operate on the wrong side of the law. With well-regulated partners, Feedxpay ensures it always stays compliant.
While in the past, some other cross-border startups have closed due to lack of funding, such as Zazuu, Dash, among others, Faruk claims, “The success of a startup is not directly proportional to the amount of money it raises.”
Looking ahead, the Feedxpay team says it will expand its ambitions beyond just making international payments and liquidity supply in Africa to other emerging markets, and also provide corporate virtual accounts and wallets to businesses, allowing them to convert over 50 currencies and make payments all on one platform.”
