South African startup Talk 360, a leading voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) player in Africa, has secured a combined $7 million in seed rounds to build a payment platform for Africa.
In May this year, Talk350 had raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by HAVAÍC. However, with the startup’s recent raise of an additional $3 million, the total investment raised so far is $7 million.
The latest investors in this new round include Allan Gray E2 Ventures (AGEV), Kalon Venture Partners, E4E Africa, Endeavor, current lead investor HAVAÍC and a number of angel investors including Tjaart van der Walt and Koenrad Jonker.
According to Talk360, it intends to use this new funding to launch a pan-African payment platform next year and increase its share of the VoIP market.
The payment platform will connect “all payment methods” across the continent, creating a diverse pool of localized payment methods, enabling international and local businesses to sell to African-based customers.
The company said in a statement, “The new platform will allow users across the continent to buy products and services using any currency and more than 160 payment methods. It will also be opened to other merchants”.
According to the Co-Founder of Talk360, despite the existing digital payment methods scattered across Africa, the startup is going to offer something more remarkable by offering micro-entrepreneurship and income-generating opportunities to users.
His words, “Our mission is to bridge distance and connect lives by offering reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use digital services, delivered in a localized manner to all communities, particularly emerging countries, so they can connect to the world
“But we’re not just solving socio-economic issues: we’re also offering micro-entrepreneurship and income generating opportunities to our growing network of agents across the country.”
The startup also has a network of agents, including PesaPoint in Kenya and Flash in South Africa, which enable users to purchase airtime vouchers from over 750,000 physical points of sale.