South African payments startup Revio raises $5.2 million seed round

Revio, a South African payment API startup, has raised a $5.2 million seed round to deepen its market across the continent. 

Revio, a South African payment API startup helping merchants optimize their order to cash lifecycle, has announced a $5.2 million seed investment. This is the startup’s latest round of funding after raising a $1.1 million seed round in 2022.

Revio will use the capital to deepen its growth across the continent and acquire new customers. The company will also be hiring talents to support its growth. The funding round was led by QED Investors and Partech. Speedinvest, RaliCap, and Everywhere VC, Revio’s previous investors also participated in the round.  

Revio is taking its place in the African digital payment market—projected to reach $146 billion in 2023—by providing businesses with an API for payments collection. Revio’s API allows businesses to accept and reconcile more than 70 payment methods. These include: the major mobile money products, card schemes, direct bank payments and wallets in 25 countries in African markets. The company also helps global and local merchants optimize their end-to-end payment processes, through features such as intelligent transaction routing, automated failover and retries, and real-time customer engagement workflows.

Ruaan Botha, Co-founder and CEO of Revio while speaking on the raise, said “We are grateful for the support of leading global and local investors, especially those as well-regarded as QED and Partech. With this funding, we are excited to double down and unlock new adjacent opportunities for value creation for our growing base of clients,”

The company now counts four of Africa’s largest insurers and two largest telcos as clients, and has secured a strategic partnership with a tier 1 African bank to offer distribution to its base of enterprise and mid-size clients.