Nigerian startup Verto, a B2B payments platform that provides a fast, simple, and reliable way for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to make payments to their suppliers in over 200 countries across 39 currencies, has raised a US$10 million Series A round to boost its geographical expansion.
Launched in 2018 by co-founders Ola Oyetayo and Anthony Oduwole, Verto has developed a fast and frictionless global payments platform that uses a marketplace solution to match businesses efficiently, especially where one of the currency pairs is an illiquid currency.
Using Verto’s three main products – payments, exchange and multi-currency account – business owners can send cross-border B2B payments at FX rates up to nine times cheaper than they could through traditional banks, while businesses can hold money in 39 currencies and make instant cross-border payments to other companies on the Verto network in real-time.
It helps more than 2,000 customers from startups to SMEs to large corporate companies facilitate billions of dollars in transactions on a yearly basis.
“While traditional peer-to-peer payment platforms often have transaction limits, the Verto platform facilitates payment volumes that are appropriate for MSMEs,” Oyetayo said.
The startup has now raised a US$10 million Series A funding round led Quona Capital, alongside The Treasury, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), TMT Investments, Unicorn Growth Capital, Zrosk Investments and P1 Ventures. Verto will use the investment to continue building out its platform, and accelerate its geographical expansion into other emerging markets in Africa.
“We plan to expand our presence in emerging markets with this fund through a suite of top-class tech stacks,” said Oduwole. “Geographically, this is an essential step towards our mission of “making international payments simple, fast and cheap. Our purposefully built tech infrastructure and payment rails enable instant cross-border payments in a way that is really exciting for businesses.”
Monica Brand Engel, co-founder and managing partner at Quona Capital, said low visibility and traceability, slow speeds and the high costs of cross-border payments all inhibit SME growth across global and emerging markets.
“Verto’s innovative platform addresses these pain points, removing friction to make international payments fast, simple, and reliable – a key component of SME growth. We are proud to support Verto in this important and impactful work,” she said.
