Top 35 Payments Startup Investors in Kenya in October 2023

Portfolio highlights

• Axoni — Axoni is a New York-based capital markets technology firm that specializes in distributed ledger infrastructure. Product offerings include blockchain deployments, large-scale data management, bespoke smart contract development, analytics services, and connectivity tools.
• AlloyX — AlloyX makes it simple and accessible for protocols, DAOs, and institutional investors to create diversified RWA investment strategies. We provide lenders with a flexible and efficient platform for managing all of their RWA assets based on their yield, risk, and liquidity preferences.
• Coinflow Labs — Coinflow is a payment solution that allows Web3 companies to accept traditional payment methods and payout their customers by converting cryptocurrency to USD in their traditional bank account.

Portfolio highlights

• PYOR — PYOR has extensive expertise building in crypto and has played major roles in the creation of several large Indian unicorns, as well as extensive experience in global blue chip organisations.
• Glystn — Glystn is a reliable platform for creator analytics and insights of any scale. The company was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in SAN FRANCISCO, California.
• CapStack — CapStack is a banking system that encourages collaboration among banks and financial services providers in order to boost asset profitability and diversification.

Portfolio highlights

• Lengo — Lengo is an AI based intelligence platform that offers a large database on consumer goods for companies in the FMCG sector.
• Nkoloso — Nkoloso is a company that uses advanced AI and robotics for agriculture, forestry, and infrastructure industries.
• Kotani Pay — Kotani Pay is a technology stack that enables blockchain protocols, dapps, and blockchain fintech companies to integrate seamlessly to local payment channels providing them with a reliable on ramp and off ramp service to reach a wider customer base in Africa.

Portfolio highlights

• Brine.fi — The best onchain spot trading crypto exchange
• Florida Street — PIXEL GG INC.
• Maverick Protocol — Trade. Earn. Any Asset. Stop paying for price discovery. Enjoy higher capital efficiency.

Portfolio highlights

• JOKR — Grocery shopping is easier now with JOKR, your instant delivery app. Order your groceries and favorite products in our online supermarket and get them instantly at your door. Download the app now and make your first grocery order on us. Available in IOs and Android. Access www.jokr.com for more info
• Vera — Vera develops an assessment platform to identify and address risks in artificial intelligence and machine learning models. It engages key stakeholders across teams to create data-driven assessments and use data science tools to investigate AI and ML models, helping organizations navigate through uncertainty and protecting companies and individualsfrom risky artificial intelligence systems.
• Nextdata — Nextdata offers an operating system for decentralized data at scale on an AI platform.

Portfolio highlights

• 0xPass — Frictionless auth and login for your dapp
• Arkifi — Arkifi is an artificial intelligence company that develops AI-powered financial analyst tools. Arkifi's framework generates consistent results that avoid fabricating factual details (referred to as "hallucination"), instilling enterprises with an unmatched level of confidence in the outcomes.
• Gradia Health — Gradia is an integrated, concierge care platform designed for clinics to support patients with chronic conditions.

Portfolio highlights

• Terraa — Terraa is a B2B distribution platform in Moroccan.
• OmniBiz — Omnibiz is a digital platform for small businesses willing to attract new customers.
• Revivo — Revivo is an online marketplace for electronics spare parts, tools & accessories.

Portfolio highlights

• Lengo — Lengo is an AI based intelligence platform that offers a large database on consumer goods for companies in the FMCG sector.
• Zanifu — The zanifu platform, allows small retailers in Sub Saharan Africa, to procure inventory from their suppliers & pay later.
• Fixit45 — Your best ever automobile service experience awaits you.

Portfolio highlights

• Chari — Chari is an e-commerce and fintech app for traditional retailers in French-Speaking Africa allowing them to order any consumer goods they sell and get delivered for free in less than 24 hours. Chari is also a financial services provider for these retailers, offering them microloans
• Carry1st — Carry1st develops and publishes enriching mobile games and content apps for African consumers.
• Beacon Power Services — Beacon Power Services is a utility company that provides energy management software and analytics for utilities.

Portfolio highlights

• Risc Zero. — RISC Zero is revolutionizing the internet by creating the infrastructure & tooling for Web3 developers around the globe to build zero-proof software.
• Lens Protocol — Lens Protocol is a composable and decentralized social graph, ready for you to build on so you can focus on creating a great experience, not scaling your users.
• Tools For Humanity — Tools For Humanity is a technology company built to ensure a more just economic system.

Portfolio highlights

• TymeBank — TymeBank is a fully black-owned and controlled investment company based in South Africa. It is an exclusively digital retail bank that aims to provide every South African accessible and affordable banking so that they can take part in, grow and benefit from the country’s economy.
• Money View — Money View is an application that is able to track and organize expenses, bills, and account balances. It is able to derive finance information from SMSs.Money View enables its users to set and follow budgets, view their bank account balance, obtain reminders about bills, and spit bills with the other users. It also facilitates Savings+ andTaxSaver+ that allows its users to save money.Money View was founded in April 2014 by Sanjay Aggarwal and Puneet Agarwal. It is based in Bangalore, Karnataka.
• Peach Payments — Get Peach as your Payment Gateway and Grow your ecommerce. Process online payments with Visa, Mastercard, Debit Orders, EFT payments, and subscriptions. Plugins for Wix, Shopify, WooCommerce.

Portfolio highlights

• Sky.Garden — Sky.Garden is a SaaS ecommerce platform that allows African retailers to sell inventory with ease. Sky.Garden gives back control to the individual retailer by allowing inventory control and immediate payment reconciliation in an automated platform, where local shipping and payment options come out-of-the-box.
• GamerzClass — A new beginning for GamerzClass
• ReFlow - engineering a circular economy —

Portfolio highlights

• Thepeer — API infrastructure for businesses
• Badili — Badili is a one-stop shop for buying and selling used and refurbished phones. Founded in 2021 and is based in Nairobi.
• Bettr — Bettr is a digital banking app for creator. Download the app to get your zero monthly fee digital bank account and virtual card. Join our community of creators, gamers, influencers, freelancers, tiktokkers, streamers, YouTubers and digital gig workers.

Portfolio highlights

• El Zatona — ElZatona offers warehouse and sales management program.
• POSRocket — Traditional cash registers are a thing of the past. POSRocket modernizes this near-obsolete system by providing business owners with an intuitive, user-friendly, cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) platform.
• Sky.Garden — Sky.Garden is a SaaS ecommerce platform that allows African retailers to sell inventory with ease. Sky.Garden gives back control to the individual retailer by allowing inventory control and immediate payment reconciliation in an automated platform, where local shipping and payment options come out-of-the-box.

Portfolio highlights

• Emata — Emata brings digital and affordable financial products to farmers in East Africa.
• Turaco — Turaco develops simplified insurance and credit solutions through mobile technology to solve the healthcare financing needs. Turaco has simplified insurance products and also provides on-demand health loans, allowing customers to get healthcare at affordable monthly premiums.
• Power — Putting individuals on the path towards financial health

Portfolio highlights

• Simporter — Make better products with more confidence, in just a fraction of the time.
• Cavea — Adlab connects brands with streamers to empower collaboration in the new creator economy. We bring creative, engaging ad campaigns to streams across the globe through automated sponsorship campaigns, which allows brands to reach specific audiences, and streamers to effortlessly monetize their content.
• Hive.id — Proactively prevent fraud, build secure experiences for your customers and drive your revenue growth.

Portfolio highlights

• Lengo — Lengo is an AI based intelligence platform that offers a large database on consumer goods for companies in the FMCG sector.
• Menthum — Saving Made Simple
• Precision Cardiovascular — Precision Cardiovascular is a unique sensor system for remote monitoring of patients with acute heart failure that provides unbiased data to improve long-term health outcomes and reduce the expenses of emergency situations.

Portfolio highlights

• Licify — Licify, a procurement cloud-based platform specialized in the construction industry, has redefined interactions between developers, contractors, sub-contractors and suppliers. It creates a community developing transparent and efficient realtionships allthrough the value chain. This improves the procurement and supply processes, generating savingsand increasing profitability.
• Bababos — Bababos is a platform that allows SME manufacturers to quickly access a variety of high-quality raw materials, from polymers and chemicals to steel and other metal products. This eliminates the need to handle numerous suppliers. The company's platform streamlines the buying process by digitizing administrative duties. Additionally, Bababosprovides manufacturers with flexible payment options that lessen their financial burden and enable them to concentrate on what they do best—producing high-quality products. Bababos enhances the SME producers' supply chains.
• Channel19 — Channel19 is building a platform for small truckers to aggregate freight from all of their digital broker and load board relationships in one place and find the best freight to move for their business. Truckers using Channel19 earn up to 20% more revenue and can save over $3,000 per truck per year in dispatch.

Portfolio highlights

• 23andMe — 23andMe is a saliva-based DNA service. We provide genetic reports on your ancestry, family history and help you connect with your DNA relatives.
• AZA Finance — AZA Finance is a digital foreign exchange and payment platform that leverages blockchain settlement to significantly lower the cost and increase the speed of business payments to and from frontier markets. AZA Group is a market-maker in every major African currency and opens corridors for business payments and trade between frontier markets andthe rest of the world. AZA Group was the first blockchain company to be licensed by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and follows stringent KYC practices. AZA Group services frontier market businesses and multinationals paying suppliers as far as China and UAE, as well as cryptocurrency traders. Our API also enables international remittance companies to send white-label payments to dozens of bank networks and mobile money operators across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, and the DRC.
• Bitnet Technologies — Bitnet provides a digital commerce platform enabling enterprise-scale merchants to accept bitcoin payments. Bitnet’s engineering, product, and business development team help in building and managing the world’s largest payment gateway, CyberSource (NASDAQ: CYBS), which was sold to the world’s largest payment network, Visa (NYSE: V), for $2billion in 2010.

Portfolio highlights

• Taimba Limited — Taimba is a B2B mobile-based platform connecting farmers to urban traders with aim of reducing food wastage and to stabilize market prices.

Portfolio highlights

• Nuru — Nuru is a solar hybrid site. Nuru (Swahili for "light") is a company dedicated to enhancing connectivity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nuru deployed Congo's first solar-based mini-grid in 2017 and is currently constructing a 1.3MW solar hybrid site in Goma, the largest off-grid mini-grid in sub-Saharan Africa.Nuru is arenewable and environment company that specializes in the fields of storage micro-grids and solar energy. The company deployed Congo's first solar-based mini-grid in 2017 and is currently constructing a 1.3MW solar hybrid site in Goma.Nuru was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Goma, Nord-Kivu, Congo.
• Sabesp — Sabesp is a Brazilian company that engages in providing basic sanitation services such as distribution of treated water, collection, and treatment of sewage. It is currently responsible for supplying water and collecting and treating sewage in the 367 municipalities of São Paulo state. It supplies 27.9 million people with water and provides sewagecollection services to 21.5 million people.Sabesp was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• Complete Farmer — We are providing cutting-edge technological farming protocols and innovations with a unique business model and logistics that are revolutionizing...

Portfolio highlights

• Taimba Limited — Taimba is a B2B mobile-based platform connecting farmers to urban traders with aim of reducing food wastage and to stabilize market prices.
• WomenChoice Industries — WomenChoice Industries is a manufacturer and distributor of low-cost, affordable, reusable sanitary towels.

Portfolio highlights

• Medusa — For developers who must customize e-commerce setups, Medusa is a new digital commerce engine that provides extensibility and customizability with low developer effort. Unlike Shopify, BigCommerce and others, we offer an open, modular architecture that removes the need for hacky workarounds and secures maintainability and speed.
• Heyhack — Automated web application security testing, protection, and reporting for software-as-a-service businesses.
• Fullview — Fullview let's you instantly monitor, control and analyze user sessions for faster real time customer support. No downloads. Easy to integrate.

Portfolio highlights

• Banked — Banked : Real time payments for consumers, businesses and banks.
• Qori — Accept a wide variety of cryptocurrencies on your POS terminal or iOS or Android device without handling crypto yourself.
• Clarisights — Clarisights streamlines reporting for sophisticated growth marketing teams. Automatically integrate, process and visualize data from all of your marketing sources.

Portfolio highlights

• Fairphone — Fairphone is a social enterprise which aims at raising awareness about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars that the sourcing of these minerals is fueling in the DR Congo.
• Triple Solar — PVT-paneel als bron voor de warmtepomp. Gasloos verwarmen en koelen met Triple Solar. Een comfortabele, stille en onderhoudsvrij oplossing.
• Oscar Circulair — Circulair aims to transform the commercial waste material industry while preserving priceless raw materials.

Portfolio highlights

• NoMy — Norwegian startup that researches and develops sustainable material and food solutions using mycelium
• Vilect AI — Vilect is a recruitment software for store managers. The system identifies the most relevant candidates and lets the hiring manager screen recorded video interviews integrated directly into the system - store managers can see their fit, personality, drive, and motivation and save time and money.
• Travelin.ai — Business and Leisure travel no longer just exist in silos but are intertwined. Travelin.ai is the Next Generation Corporate Travel Management Platform which reflects the true way we live, work and travel.

Portfolio highlights

• Sequel.io — Stellar empowers brands to build unique live experiences to connect with their community in their own digital homes.
• Resemble AI — AI voice generator with voice cloning for text to speech.
• Arrive Recommerce — Arrive offers a premium service powering circular commerce for major brands and retailers. The technology and reverse logistics capabilities of The Arrive Platform enables brands and retailers in any industry to integrate circular commerce - including rental and resale - directly into an existing ecommerce experience. With this unique offering,Arrive makes it possible for any company to seamlessly launch a circular channel - ultimately reaching more consumers, driving more revenue, and promoting a sustainable solution. Arrive, first launched as Arrive Outdoors, is an award-winning company and has been named the 4th Most Innovative Travel Company by Fast Company in 2020 and awarded the 2019 Outdoor Retailer of the Year by the Outdoor Retailer Association.

Portfolio highlights

• RxAll — RxAll is a drug checking technology that solves drug counterfeiting by providing a proprietary AI platform- nanoscanners and a mobile app to test drugs- prescription & recreational- in real time without destroying the sample
• Tippsy — Largest selection of sake delivered to you. Tippsy makes finding good sake easy and fun! Free shipping 6+ bottles. Sake club subscription offers special perks such as member-exclusive discounts, virtual sake tasting as well as a beginner's guide.
• manebi Japan — manebi is an Career development support platform business to support human transformation.

Portfolio highlights

• iMerit — iMerit's end-to-end data labeling solutions combined with Ango Hub data annotation tool is a best-in-class platform to scale your AI and machine learning data pipelines.
• Neogrowth — Neogrowth operates as a non-banking financial company in India. It is focused on meeting the financial needs of small businesses which sell goods and services to consumers. It offers business financing services to small- and medium-sized retail companies that sell apparel, consumer durables and electronic items, footwear and accessories,handicrafts, gifts, and optical goods as well as to restaurants, beauty salons, hotels, gymnasiums, and health diagnostic centers. NeoGrowth began its commercial operations in 2013.
• Smile ID — Smile ID provides the best onboarding, identity verification, and user authentication service for fast growing businesses and startups in Africa.

Portfolio highlights

• Vexi — Vexi issues, operates and processes credit cards for young underbanked population on a mission to make credit accessible, through a 100% digital onboarding and unparalleled customer experience
• SatSure — SatSure, they are on a mission to evolve crop insurance products and provide accurate risk assessment of crop yield by integrating climatic variables with geospatial and economic datasets.
• Altro (fka Perch) — Perch Credit (also known as Perch), is a fin-tech mobile app that allows users to take common recurring expenses, such as their subscriptions & rent, and turn these into creditworthy data points. Perch is currrently live on iOS and plans to be on Android in the coming months.Perch recently graduated YC (S20) and closed 2.5M in their mostrecent round.

Portfolio highlights

• Thunes — Payment infrastructure for a connected world.
• Tuma — TumaTM is a smart, micro merchant solution that enables businesses to take card payments from customers using their own smartphones.
• Doxa Holdings — Doxa Holdings International is a fintech start-up helping connect buyers, suppliers, and financiers seamlessly through its best-in-class enterprise platform, Doxa Connex — a procurement, payment, financing, and analytics platform for the Built Environment (Construction, Engineering, Real Estate Developers).Officially incorporated in Jan 2019, ithas grown more than twice in size since 2021 and serves customers across the world, with a regional focus in Southeast Asia. It has deep and significant partnerships with financial institutions and is also recognised as a Networked Trade Platform (NTP) Value Added Service, while being fully integrated with the InvoiceNow and PEPPOL invoicing network.Doxa closed its S$3m Pre-Series A round from financial institutions including VCs, public listed and logistics corporations, and obtained internationally recognised ISO27001 and ISO20000 certifications in 2022.

Portfolio highlights

• Opolis — Opolis is next-gen Digital Employment Platform for Freelancers providing payroll, benefits and other services for independent workers and freelancers.
• GAST Clearwater — GAST Clearwater is a US-based, next-generation water treatment company with a mission to provide Water for Mankind one drop at a time. Operating in various industries and markets from Real Estate, Wastewater Treatment, Municipal Potable Water, and various others in particular focusing on the recovering and recycling of different waters in acentralized or decentralized way. The company also does artificial beaches, urban lagoons, wave pools, surf parks, aquatics to sewerage treatment, wastewater, and drinking water.
• Alef Aeronautics — Armada operates in a stealth mode

Portfolio highlights

• AgroStar — AgroStar is India’s foremost AgTech start-up working on the mission of #HelpingFarmersWin by providing a complete range of agri solutions at the fingertips of farmers. AgroStar’s tech platform provides a combination of agronomy advice coupled with service and agri input products that enable farmers to significantly improve their productivity andincome.We use an extensive amount of data, technology and agronomy knowledge to give the right solutions (advice+products) to Indian farmers.AgroStar currently operates in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan and has over 5 Lakh farmers on its digital platform. Farmers in these states can avail agri solutions for their entire crop life-cycle with a simple “missed call” or through its Android app, which is amongst the highest rated farming focused apps in the country.Over the next 5 years, we plan to continue to provide incremental value to farmers in terms of wide range of inputs delivered at their doorsteps, world-class agronomy guidance and also access to market linkages and credit.
• Altum Credo — Avail best home loans with simple and quick approval process, we make your dream home buying easier and hassle free.
• Financepeer — Financepeer is a unique peer to peer lending platform designed to address financial needs of self-employed, entrepreneurs & salaried individuals through a highly secure, digital medium.

Portfolio highlights

• AdMob — Earn more from your mobile apps using in-app ads to generate revenue, gain actionable insights, and grow your app with easy-to-use tools.
• Efhtight — Secret to way company of Efhtight
• Inflection AI — We are an AI studio creating a personal AI for everyone.

Portfolio highlights

• Tuma — TumaTM is a smart, micro merchant solution that enables businesses to take card payments from customers using their own smartphones.