Revio - Afrikan Heroes

South African Fintech Revio Raises $5.2M to Simplify African Payments

September 28, 2023

Revio, a South African fintech startup, has recently secured $5.2 million in seed funding. The investment amount, $5.2 million, came from a group of investors that includes Speedinvest, Ralicap, Everywhere VC, QED, and Partech. The intention behind this investment is to strengthen Revio’s efforts in addressing the fragmented payment landscape in Africa. Revio was founded by Ruaan Botha, who currently serves as the co-founder and CEO. The startup is focused on payment orchestration, streamlining the order-to-cash lifecycles for businesses in Africa. It connects businesses to over 70 payment methods and service providers, aiming to reduce payment failures that cost digital businesses billions in recurring revenue yearly.

Why The Investors Invested

The investors’ decision to commit funds to Revio can be attributed to several key factors. In the first place, the rapid growth of digital payments in Africa is a compelling market opportunity. With a projected value of $146 billion in 2023 and significant mobile money transactions, Africa presents unique challenges and opportunities in the payments space. Revio’s focus on addressing the fragmentation of the payments ecosystem, with over 280 licensed payment service providers and 42 currencies, aligns with the growing demand for payment solutions in this diverse market.

Again, Revio’s approach to payment orchestration is essential for businesses operating across multiple countries and accepting various payment methods. The need for such platforms is evident, as they simplify the complex process of handling payments and increase payment success rates. Revio’s API-driven approach offers merchants access to transaction routing, automated failover, real-time customer engagement workflows, and even a revenue recovery use case that addresses payment failures due to insufficient funds or abandoned authorizations.

Moreover, the participation of investors like QED and Partech, known for their growth-stage investments, in Revio’s seed round reflects the recognition of the startup’s product relevance and potential impact. This move sets a positive signal for the African startup ecosystem, encouraging early-stage investments even in challenging market conditions.

A Look at Revio

Revio is a relatively young startup, founded just two years ago. Ruaan Botha, the co-founder and CEO, leads the company. While Revio is based in South Africa, its reach extends beyond its home country to serve businesses across more than 25 African markets. The startup focuses on assisting companies in connecting to multiple payment methods and reducing payment failures, particularly targeting large-scale enterprises with complex payment needs.

The core value proposition of Revio is its ability to streamline the order-to-cash lifecycle for merchants. Through its API, it enables businesses to access a wide range of payment methods, facilitating transaction routing, automated failover, and real-time customer engagement workflows. Additionally, Revio’s innovative approach includes a revenue recovery use case, which leverages communication channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications to re-engage consumers and provide more convenient payment options.

Revio has seen remarkable growth, with a 1,000% increase in revenue over the past year. Its client base includes some of Africa’s largest insurers and telecom companies, such as Old Mutual, MTN’s aYo, Innovation Group, and Standard Bank. Looking ahead, Revio plans to target global retailers servicing the African market and expand its capabilities in cross-border reconciliation settlement. The recently secured capital will be instrumental in advancing the company’s technological capabilities and expanding its team, both locally and internationally. In conclusion, Revio’s mission is to address the ongoing challenges in the African payment landscape and unlock increased e-commerce and digital payment activity on the continent.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard

Revio raises $1.1 million to drive better payment experiences in emerging markets

November 26, 2022

Revio raises $1.1 million from leading investors to solve the payments failure problem in emerging markets. The round was led by SpeedInvest, joined by RaliCap Ventures, The Fund, and Two Culture Capital. Several angel investors also participated, including payment and revenue recovery experts from Sequoia, Quona Capital, and Circle Payments.

The funding will be used to launch new products, expand the team, and enter new emerging markets, all contributing to Revio’s mission of reducing payment failures and churn. Its Payments Orchestration, Billing Automation, and Revenue Recovery solutions enable businesses to passively, actively, and proactively recover lost transactions, to increase revenue, optimise cashflow, and increase customer lifetime value.

The round was led by global FinTech investor SpeedInvest, joined by RaliCap, The Fund, and Two Culture Capital. Several angel investors also participated, including payment and collections experts from Sequoia, Quona Capital and Circle Payments. This is Revio’s first institutional funding round since emerging from stealth in March 2021.

“We’re grateful to be supported by some of the world’s best FinTech investors and operators,” said Revio founder and CEO, Ruaan Botha. “We have ambitions to build a global business that helps businesses reduce failed payments and recover revenue they’ve earned. We know that growing a business is hard, but getting paid shouldn’t be. I’m excited to partner with our investor community to accelerate our growth and the value that we deliver to our customers.”

In Africa, 2-3 out of every 10 payments fail, compared to the 0.7 global average. Reasons for this include the fragmented payments landscape, higher dispute rates, invalid or expired card details, false-positive fraud checks, multiple or dormant accounts, and insufficient funds. This high failure rate results in billions of dollars in lost revenue. In Africa alone, an estimated $14 billion in recurring revenue is uncollected each year, and the continent has a 320% higher churn rate than mature markets.

With digital payments growing at 20%+ year-on-year, this problem will only intensify. While gateways and aggregators have made it easier for businesses to accept multiple payment methods, few solutions exist to deal with payment failures.

“Revio is building a category-leading product to enable businesses to better manage their cash flow and accelerate growth,” said Hayden Simmons, Partner at RaliCap Ventures. “The African payments landscape is fragmented, and we believe they will play a critical role in contributing to the growth of subscription commerce and companies with pan-African scale.”

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Today, businesses can integrate with Revio’s API to seamlessly accept and reconcile 20+ payment methods across 25+ African markets, to increase their payment success rates and automate revenue operations. Based on the insight that ‘there’s more to getting paid than accepting payments,’ Revio offers:

Smart payment routing and failover to increase payment success rates
Configurable auto-retries, dunning rules, and proactive card expiry management
Data-driven interactions to recover lost revenue, including secure payment links, self-service billing changes, and options to settle arrears in cash at a nearby retailer
Real-time analytics and reporting to optimise recovery processes

Combined with real-time customer segmentation and analysis, these capabilities can help businesses increase their customer lifetime value and direct collections effort toward the customers with the highest return on investment. Through a single integration, businesses can access all these functionalities, simplifying complexity, accelerating speed to market, and increasing revenue and customer lifetime value.

In just one year of trading, Revio has landed 50+ customers and processes thousands of transactions each month. The client base is diverse, spanning large-scale enterprises, mid-market corporates, and fast-growing scale-ups across multiple industries. The current traction is just the beginning of Revio’s story. Locally grounded but globally relevant, the team aims to be the go-to revenue recovery and growth partner for businesses in all emerging markets.

“Revio’s leadership team has bold ambitions and deep industry experience, which is a powerful combination. They have attracted some of the best talent in the market and are executing at pace. We are excited to be investing at this inflection point in their journey,” said Scott Hartley, Co-founder and Partner at The Fund.

“Having been part of multiple payment orchestration and billing automation platforms across the world, we can see the incredible potential of using this toolset to increase revenue recovery for businesses in a region where three out of ten payments fail. With a team as experienced as Revio’s at the helm of tackling this massive opportunity we’re convinced that they can fundamentally change the payments landscape for businesses in their target markets and are excited to be backing them on that journey,” said Alvaro Perezcano, FinTech Investor at SpeedInvest.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh

How A South African Venture Fund Led $1m Funding Round In Revio, A Startup It Built

August 8, 2021

Revio, a Cape Town-based startup that assists businesses with invoicing and subscription management is not one to worry about lack of access to funding. The startup has raised ZAR15 million ($1 million) in seed funding backed by its owner, a venture builder, The Delta, which, not long ago, had invested in Strove, its employee wellness company.

“75% of South Africa consumers have at least one account in arrears, putting most businesses at risk. Revio makes it easy to avoid failed payments, customer churn and improve customer loyalty,” said Louis Buys, CEO of The Delta and co-founder of Revio.

Revio South African — *Louis Buys, CEO of The Delta and co-founder of Revio*

The Delta has raised ZAR170 million ($11.6m) for various enterprises in the last year, including a ZAR4 million fundraising round for Strove. It’s also soliciting cash for AI-BO, a disruptive market research tool, and Priv, a data privacy platform that helps businesses comply with the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union and the Protection of Personal Information Act of South Africa.

A Look At What The Startup Does

Revio was founded in 2020 with the goal of assisting companies with their billing subscriptions, particularly those in the software-as-a-service space.
It integrates with Absa, Ozow, Flash, and Standard Bank, as well as e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Opencart, and Magento.
Customers at danger of churn are contacted, customer arrears management is automated, and customers are rewarded for good behavior, with human-to-human touch points as needed.

It supports all currencies and works with financial startup Flutterwave, allowing SaaS businesses to sell their products to customers throughout Africa.

Revio is now focused on the South African market, but by the end of 2021, it plans to extend to other African countries. In 2022, the company plans to formally start in East Africa.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer