Mauritius-based payments technology startup VantagePay has announced that Crossfin Holdings has purchased a “significant share” in the business for an undisclosed amount.

“VantagePay has developed a leading cloud-based payments platform to address the massive latent demand for access to trusted financial services in Africa. The modular architecture of our platform enables a great deal of synergy and complimentary offerings between VantagePay and Crossfin’s portfolio companies,” Barry Lobel, VantagePay’s CEO and co-founder, said while welcoming the investment from Crossfin. 

Why The Investors Invested

“The business has a superior payments platform that has already been adopted by numerous banks, telcos and fintech platforms and is well placed to expand rapidly across the African continent. It also has a very experienced management team that has proven capability in developing successful pan-African payments companies,” Crossfin’s chief executive officer, Dean Sparrow, said.

“We feel that Crossfin is an excellent partner for VantagePay and believe they will stand out in an increasingly competitive payments space. We look forward to leveraging the many identified synergies with our portfolio companies whilst also assisting VantagePay in achieving its goal of becoming a leading pan-African payments facilitator.”

Crossfin is the premier independent fintech group, with a focus on payments technologies and smart funding. Among its portfolio firms are Adumo, the leading independent omnichannel payment acquiring business in South Africa, Crossgate, a card issuer and alliance banking solution provider for retailers, banks, and non-bank institutions, and Retail Capital, a smart funder with a focus on SMMEs.

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A Look At What VantagePay Does

VantagePay, previously ZappGroup Africa Limited and V2 Limited, was created in 2018 with a purpose to provide top payment and technology services across Africa. Headquartered in Mauritius, with offices in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and London, VantagePay is now delivering payments solutions to prominent Ghanaian banks, telcos and fintech with plans to grow into numerous African nations in the future years.

Co-founder Paul Edwards is a former CEO of MTN and Multichoice, and more recently founding executive chairman of Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), the latter of which was launched in 2010 and in six years had become the leading pan-African and pan-Middle Eastern payments processor.

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“Africa represents a huge market for mobile payments, given the relatively high mobile phone penetration coupled with a relatively low penetration of financial services,” said Edwards. “VantagePay has incorporated the learnings of EMP and other countries, such as China, in developing a business model that enables cost-effective, deep penetration of payment services into African markets.”

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