Talk360 Details Its Plans To Build An African Payment Platform After Securing Seed Round Funding

Talk360 Details Its Plans To Build An African Payment Platform After Securing Seed Round Funding. South African startup Talk360 has announced that it has secured $4 million in seed round funding as it prepares to launch a new pan-African payment platform in mid-2022.

While the Talk360 app is seeing rapid growth on the continent, with a growing number of paying users, accessibility has been an issue for the 500 million underserviced people. Users either don’t have online banking to buy Talk360 airtime, or their local currencies or payment methods are simply not supported. The new payment platform aims to address the continued issue of inaccessibility by providing users with the option to buy products and services using any currency and more than 160 payment methods. It will also be opened to other service providers.

“From the start, our mission was to bridge distance and connect lives by offering reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use digital services, delivered in a localised manner to all communities, particularly emerging countries, so they can connect to the world. The Talk360 app is now the number one calling app in Africa, independent of users’ currency or preferred way of payment. Thanks to our + 750K physical points of sale and ability to support mobile wallets, our reach goes beyond the traditional credit and debit card support that international companies usually use. We now have enough traction to attract internationally renowned investors to expand our footprint and allow other companies to use our unique single checkout payment platform for all of Africa,” co-founder Dean Hiine said in a statement.

The seed round of funding was led by leading African venture capital investor HAVAÍC, 4Di Capital and several prominent fintech angel investors.