Revio raises USD 5.2 million in seed funding

As several payment operators provide different payment options to customers and businesses, the payment landscape in Africa still fragmented. Factors such as invalid cards, inactive accounts, and high dispute rates support this fragmentation, leading to payment failures. Revio’s objective is to address this decentralisation through its solutions, the startup being established to solve the issues of manual effort done by businesses while collecting payments across various providers.

According to Revio’s officials, digital payments are constantly expanding across Africa, being expected to reach USD 146 billion by the end of 2023, before taking into account approximately USD 500 billion in mobile money transactions. Currently, the region has more than 280 licenced payment service providers, 42 currencies, and unique consumer payment cultures. Via its APIs, Revio assists companies in streamlining their order-to-cash lifecycles while managing issues brought on by employing various payment options.  

Businesses that operate in multiple countries and accept several payment methods require payment orchestration platforms to eliminate possible issues and difficulties. In the statement offered to TechCrunch, Revio’s representatives stated that their company developed an end-to-end payment value chain to support merchants in collecting revenue from their customers. Through its APIs, merchants can connect to approximately 70 payment options and service providers, providing them with access to transaction routing, automated failover and retries, and real-time customer engagement workflows to increase payment success rates.

Payment failure is not only due to technical difficulties, but it also can be attributed to insufficient funds or an abandoned authorisation. To address this, the platform allows real-time action via channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications to re-engage the user in the checkout process and provide them with a more convenient payment method, including cash and flexible payment plans. Moreover, Revio tackles the need for broad coverage of businesses that serve across different markets by expanding its scope to encompass over 25 African markets.

The startup’s focus is on clients that have complex payment needs and are usually operating in multiple markets, or recurring revenue businesses that are underserved and have unique risks and complexities around collecting payment tokenisation. Some of Revio’s clients include Old Mutual, MTN’s aYo, Innovation Group, and Standard Bank. Representatives also confirmed that the company plans to target global retailers servicing the African market during its next development phase. 

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