Over the previous decade, Dubai-based Community Worldwide has change into one of many dominant fee processors throughout the Center East and Africa, thanks partially to a pair of acquisitions.
Nevertheless, many giant incumbents can fall prey to slower innovation, opening the door for smaller, faster-moving startups. The newest improvement is Enza, a fintech based in 2022 by Hany Fekry, a former managing director at Community, together with one other ex-Community government Hamish Houston.
The fintech, which has raised $6 million in seed funding, is constructing infrastructure for banks and fintechs, providing a variety of native fee options, from playing cards to wallets to real-time funds.
Earlier than launching Enza, the founders managed international acceptance, processing, and client finance departments at Community Worldwide. Whereas Community was constructing a sturdy funds community throughout the Center East and Africa, focusing totally on the acceptance aspect of issues, they felt a large hole in creating complete options for banks and fintechs, particularly in Africa.
When neither celebration may discover an alignment with Community, they resigned to start out Enza, which formally launched in January 2023.
“Our divergence prompted us to take a step again and rethink tackle these underserved wants out there,” CEO Fekry informed TechCrunch.
The founders of Enza say they’ve constructed the corporate utilizing classes from their time at Community Worldwide and its subsidiary, DPO Group. However not like these companies, which centered largely on card acceptance and service provider buying, Enza is taking a broader method, serving each side of the transaction.
Enza’s platform is designed for banks and fintechs on the issuing aspect, and SMEs and retailers on the acceptance aspect. The startup is initially focusing on Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, three of the continent’s largest monetary markets.
Funds acceptance into broader fintech scale
Funds are sometimes the primary entry level into formal finance for the hundreds of thousands of underserved or unbanked small companies throughout Africa. Enza desires to assist these companies settle for in-person and on-line funds at little to no price — a technique it thinks will enable banks and fintechs to construct long-term relationships.
As soon as these are in place, Enza’s infrastructure permits cross-selling of lending, financial savings, insurance coverage, and different monetary providers.
“Funds are the gateway,” says Andrew Key, who joined Enza as an government director final yr. “However the worth is within the knowledge and the providers you may layer on high.”
That technique additionally performs to the altering dynamics between banks and fintechs in Africa. For years, banks have ceded infrastructure and significantly SME market share to gamers like Flutterwave, Fawry, Paymob, and Moniepoint, now Nigeria’s largest service provider acquirer. However banks nonetheless maintain key benefits, particularly broader service choices and regulatory backing.
“Banks have realized they gave up an excessive amount of floor to fintechs,” Houston mentioned. “We wish to give them the tech to compete and win it again.”
Equally, regardless of the rise of fintechs throughout Africa, banks stay the central, regulated gamers behind most fee aggregators. However many nonetheless lack clear visibility into what their aggregator companions or downstream retailers are doing.
That’s considered one of Enza’s functionalities, the founders say: Giving banks extra transparency and management over their fee ecosystems to allow them to keep compliant whereas scaling.
The Abu Dhabi-based startup additionally broadens the fee choices obtainable to banks. Enza integrates with native card schemes like Verve, AfriGo, and Meeza, alongside international networks like Visa and Mastercard.
It additionally connects with real-time fee infrastructure, together with Nigeria’s NIBSS, South Africa’s PayShap, and Egypt’s InstaPay, in addition to cellular cash and telco wallets, whereas supporting QR codes, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), and contactless funds options.
Leveraging founders’ networks
Enza is leveraging its founders’ many years of expertise and deep relationships throughout the continent to rapidly safe contracts with a number of banks. As an example, Fekry beforehand served as chief business officer at Rising Markets Funds (EMP), which was acquired by Community Worldwide, the place he later turned a managing director.
Throughout their careers, the staff has labored with practically 200 banks. However this time, they’re going for high quality over amount. “We’re not attempting to duplicate that scale,” Houston mentioned. “We’re focusing on 30 to 40 high-quality financial institution relationships.”
Whereas the corporate solely started operations final yr, the Dubai-based fintech has already secured over 10 million month-to-month contracted transactions by means of reside financial institution partnerships throughout six African markets, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Uganda, and South Africa.
Enza fees banks on a per-transaction (“per-click”) foundation. These volumes are rising 35 to 40% month-over-month and are anticipated to double within the subsequent two years.
The corporate bootstrapped in its early years, with the founders funding it themselves. After they determined to lift outdoors capital, the founders mentioned they didn’t store the deal extensively.
As a substitute, Algebra Ventures and Quona Capital led the $6 million seed spherical. “The Enza management staff has a formidable monitor document of beginning, rising, and exiting fintech companies throughout the continent,” mentioned Tarek Assaad, managing associate at Algebra Ventures, on why his agency backed the two-year-old fintech.
The brand new capital will go towards increasing the staff and rolling out new merchandise for its banking clientele throughout Africa.
“We based Enza to unravel actual infrastructure issues throughout Africa,” Fekry mentioned. “We’ve spent our careers attempting to verify our households and communities can entry monetary merchandise as folks in Europe or the U.S. at a low price and anytime they need.”
