Application programming interfaces (APIs) allow your product or service to communicate with other products and services without requiring you to understand how they’re built.
This can hasten up and reduce the cost of app development. APIs enable freedom, ease design, administration, and use, and allow for innovation whether creating new tools and products or managing current ones.
However, there is unexplored potential in terms of API in Africa and the Middle East, where just a few businesses deliver transparency to merchants’ payment stacks.
MoneyHash, based in Egypt and the United States, is one such startup that has emerged from beta with $3 million in pre-seed capital.
The startup bills itself as the first super-API for payment orchestration and revenue operations in the Middle East and Africa.
MoneyHash plans to use the capital to accelerate its expansion throughout the Middle East and Africa, according to a release.
The startup also wants to employ mid-level and senior software engineers to join its existing workforce of 15, which is spread across the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, and portions of Europe.
MoneyHash reported an unnamed six-figure investment in June last year from investors including Ventures Platform, Kepple Africa Ventures, LoftyInc Capital, and lead COTU Ventures.
This addition was similarly headed by the Middle Eastern initial fund, with involvement from earlier backers in the pre-seed round as well as others such as VentureSouq, VentureFriends, The Continent Venture Partners, and First Check Africa. Tim Chen of NerdWallet, Jake Gibson of Belvo, and Oriol Tintore of Belvo are among the angel investors.
MoneyHash was formed in late 2020 by Nader Abdelrazik, Mustafa Eid, and Anisha Sekar, who have a collective experience of over 30 years working for firms such as Microsoft, UpWork, NerdWallet, and Sigfig.
The startup is at the forefront of payment processors, providing infrastructure as an expansion of their product backends. This add-on becomes their link to the full transaction ecosystem in the markets where they do business.
The concept behind the super-API, according to CEO Abdelrazik, is to combine all of the various transaction accounts and create all of these features on top of it.
MoneyHash becomes a one-stop-shop platform, or payments stack, that you can integrate into your product to manage all of these multiple integrations and checkout experiences in each of the African and Middle Eastern nations while keeping all of your data in one place.
MoneyHash launched in Egypt in early 2021, allowing 17 firms to join its API and use payment gateways such as Fawry, Paymob, and PayTabs through its sandbox environment.
After the beta, MoneyHash will integrate with a variety of the Middle East and North African payment gateways and processors. Checkout, Stripe, Ayden, Amazon Pay, Tap, and ValU are just a few.
Techbuild’s Take
Every purchase you complete on any e-commerce or other platforms, bank, or fintech app is based on interactions that enable you and billions of other customers to use these services; these interactions are known as application programming interfaces (APIs) (API).
Major businesses, especially those with multiple locations, must be able to accept a variety of transaction modes. Every transaction connection necessitates in-house technical effort as well as platform modification to accommodate the modules.
It’s a lengthy procedure that has resulted in certain Big Tech firms forming committed teams to handle various connections, data, and cycles with transactions gateways in the regions where they operate.
Several fintech in this industry, on the other hand, are gaining pace and attracting lucrative investments. API fintech firms received a wave of venture capital funding last year.
Pngme secured $15 million, while Mono received the same amount to support its revolutionary API, which enables businesses to create bank statements, verify account information, make payments, and run credit checks.
In a seed round, Okra acquired $3.5 million. Stitch received a $2 million seed expansion in South Africa, bringing its total seed funding to $6 million.
OnePipe raised $3.5 million in preliminary funding to fulfill the continent’s growing demand for integrated financing.
MoneyHash has joined in companies raising funds to enhance its super API payment platform.
The company’s clientele comes from a variety of businesses, including e-commerce, travel & tourism, and remittances, to name a few.
With a few keystrokes, they can connect payment providers, incorporate a single checkout system, and use micro-services like transaction forwarding, subscription management, and invoicing on the system.
Five of the 17 firms who tried out its sandbox for free are now paying users. MoneyHash bills these businesses $150 to $1,000 per month, based on how many payment providers they connect to.
The platform also charges transaction fees, which begin at ten cents and decrease as the number of payments grows.
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