Fintech Moment raises $22m for African payments

Moment, a pan-African fintech, has closed a $22-million (around R364-million) Series A funding round, led by AlphaCode Venture Partners, with continued investment from General Catalyst, MultiChoice, and new investment from Canal+.

Since inception, Moment has raised $55-million (more than R900-million) to develop one of the continent’s most advanced payment infrastructure businesses. The company aims to offer a comprehensive suite of payment collection and revenue retention solutions to corporate and enterprise merchants. The company will use the additional funding from this Series A round to deepen its network, enhance its platform and accelerate expansion across Africa.

“Africa’s payment complexity has long been a hidden tax on commerce – on every business trying to grow here, and on every household trying to participate in the digital economy,” says Dominique Collett, general partner of AlphaCode Venture Partners. “Moment is dismantling that barrier in a way we haven’t seen before, at continental scale, compliantly, and with a product that the market’s largest enterprises have already validated. We’re backing Joel Yarbrough, Moment’s CEO, and his team as they build a defining piece of Africa’s financial infrastructure.”

Africa’s payment landscape is notoriously fragmented, says the company, with local payment behaviour varying dramatically across markets. In South Africa, over two-thirds of payments are made in person at retail locations despite high bank penetration. In Nigeria, instant bank transfers dominate, with strong competition from cash, cards, and digital wallets. In other markets, mobile money platforms have thrived due to low bank penetration, but are fragmented across dozens of operators, with no single provider able to offer merchants unified collections across all channels. Moment aims to address this.

Yarbrough says: “Within three years of launch, we are processing for 10-million people a month across some of Africa’s leading brands. We support the full spectrum of locally preferred digital payment methods as well as an in-person acceptance network spanning over two million physical locations. Our platform is highly resilient, and we process 600,000 transactions a day despite power and connectivity problems that plague the market. We’ve built a platform that can deliver on the particular challenges of the African market and help businesses get paid faster and at lower cost.”

Thomas Follin, Canal+ chief diversification officer, says: “Following Canal+’s acquisition of MultiChoice, we took a close look at Moment, and we were genuinely impressed. Moment has driven down cost and improved quality simultaneously. The business provides world-class technology for enterprise-grade subscription and billing customers that operate in Africa. Together we see a compelling opportunity to expand digital financial access across the continent.”

Moment can offer billers and merchants such as insurers and subscription platforms a suite of collection tools including recurring payments, customer outreach tools, failed payment recoveries across digital and in-person channels, and the ability to directly link Moment to their enterprise billing systems.

Moment lets customers pay with locally preferred payment methods, including cards, mobile money, real-time bank transfers, eWallets, recurring bank debits, and in-person payments.

In addition to advanced APIs, Moment offers a variety of low- and no-code tools to get any merchant up and running quickly, allowing them to collect payments and retain their customers with limited technical effort.

Giulio di Giannatale, Sanlam technical lead, says: “What excites Sanlam most about Moment isn’t just what they do today, it’s the roadmap we’re building together. From embedded insurance in payment flows, to data-driven collection optimisation, to serving the mass market across Africa with flexible, customer-first payment options, Moment is a genuine innovation partner. This fundraise gives them the runway to accelerate what we’ve already proven works, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration across the Sanlam group.”

Moment aims to ensure merchants can confidently collect anywhere while getting their money faster than before. The company says it does this by optimising subscription and instalment payments, adding new locally preferred collection methods across Africa, and integrating intelligence into its reconciliation and back-office clearing capabilities.