Kenyan fintech startup Nouveta is allowing merchants and customers to transact with ease via its own payments gateway integrated with channels such as web, apps, social media, SMS and USSD.
Formed in November of last year, Nouveta launched operations in February. Its integrated payments gateway allows customers to make payments to service providers and merchants via a number of methods.
The startup also integrates its payments gateway with whatever systems used by the service providers and merchants to manage their businesses for automated reconciliation, and is an IBM Business Partner.
“This allows us to provide added value to our clients by providing cognitive data analytics, discovery services through IBM Watson, and API development services, as well as other services available on IBM Cloud,” Hezron Muriuki, chief executive officer (CEO) of Nouveta, told Disrupt Africa.
Muriuki was inspired to launch the startup based on his view that other solutions available in the market do not focus on the customer’s user experience.
“The customer has to remember too many details before they can make payments,” he said. “Nouveta is able to develop payments channels across all customer touch points to allow customers to pay conveniently. We have developed an omni-channel payments experience, which allows for single-step approval by the customer to allow for payments to be processed.
Nouveta has also managed to localise its solution to operate both online and offline, and it can be used as a mobile point of sale (PoS).
“We are not aware of anyone else integrating payments across all customer touch points and allowing for single-step approval,” Muriuki said.
The startup is self-funded, and has so far not sought funding from investors.
“We are a transaction-based business. We do not charge for integration and we have no monthly recurring fees. We have not reached break-even at the moment, but we making sufficient revenue to cover our costs,” said Muriuki.
“Our biggest landmark so far has been becoming an IBM Business Partner. This has exposed us to a wealth of resources that we can use to improve our service delivery and add value to our solutions.”
He added that uptake so far has been pleasing.
“We are struggling to keep up with requests for demos from potential clients, and we have already signed up several clients,” he said.
Nouveta is already thinking further afield than its home market of Kenya.
“We are looking forward to offer our solutions in the neighbouring countries of Uganda and Tanzania. We are also entering Ethiopia having identified a few partners there we can work with,” said Muriuki.
“We are scoping out opportunities to expand our operations, and we will be driven by our clients’ needs. Ultimately, we want our solutions to be available globally.”
