InstaSend, a Kenyan tech firm has taken centre-stage in providing payment infrastructure for startups, businesses, and developers to build secure and scalable fintech products faster.

The three year fintech platform was founded in 2019 by Felix Cheruiyot and Moses Korir in September 2019, IntaSend enables startups and developers to create fintech products and go live in days, at a fraction of the cost. The startup enables developers to create fintech products that can collect, disburse, and hold funds with a few lines of code.

“Initially, we worked as consultants and we always had challenges receiving payments from international clients. As we researched we found that many freelancers faced similar challenges when trying to collect payments online. This led us to create a solution that made it easier for freelancers to collect payments online,” Korir said.

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IntaSend has aggregated payment collections through card and mobile money, disbursements to mobile money and banks, and digital wallet services to a single API, eliminating the challenges of lack of interoperability of payment systems. When businesses, startups, and freelancers sign up on IntaSend, they are able to accept mobile money and card payments online, and disburse funds to M-Pesa and banks.

IntaSend also provides no code solutions like payment links which enable freelancers to invoice their customers and collect payments.

“Initially, we started operations as a payment gateway but as we spoke to our customers and developers, they expressed the challenges they face when developing fintech products,” Korir said.

“The biggest challenge developers and startups face is the time taken – about six months – to develop secure and scalable fintech applications. It is also expensive to develop these apps, with costs ranging from US$50,000 to US$100,000 with the majority of the budget spent on digital wallet development, payments, security, and compliance.”

There has been a significant interest in the startup’s solution.

“We are currently serving over 1,000 businesses and freelancers. More than 40,000 digital wallets have been created on the IntaSend platform,” said Korir.

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Bootstrapped since inception, InstaSend is currently in the process of fundraising, and has plans to expand across Sub-Saharan Africa.

“We charge a transaction fee for the funds we collect on behalf of our customers. We have already surpassed the total payments we processed in the year 2021, and we are on course this year to more than double the payments we processed in 2021,” Korir said.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry