Nigerian startup Payscribe has relaunched after three years as a side project with a renewed focus on digitising cash payments and providing daily essential financial services at a user’s fingertips.
Originally launched in May 2019, Payscribe remained for some time a side project of founder Sokoya Philip, who envisaged that one day Nigeria would go cashless. He only went full-time on the company last year, however, relaunching it as an all-in-one digital financial services marketplace with a focus on helping users manage their finances.
The platform allows users to save a certain percentage of every transaction they make and accrue interest, track their expenses and make budgets, send and receive money, and implement payment schedules.
Philip said the total addressable market was huge for cashless payments, savings and budgeting, and bill payments. Meanwhile, with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introducing a cashless policy, in the process reducing cash withdrawal limits, there is increasing demand for digital financial services in Nigeria.
“Payscribe’s products and services have already positioned it to help increase financial inclusion by providing an alternative to traditional banking services,” Philip told Disrupt Africa.
The bootstrapped startup has benefitted from this demand, and its founder focusing on it full-time, and has seen its user base grow by 45 per cent in 12 months.
“There has been a good uptake in our services,” Philip said. “We have partnered with many merchants with thousands of customers to provide daily essential financial services on their application,” he said.
“Our plan now is to strengthen the product marketing, build partnerships and reputation, and establish a competitive position in the market in order to meet our long-term goal of becoming the leading digital financial service provider in Nigeria.”
For Payscribe, which monetises via money transfer fees, commissions, and a one-time subscription charge for Pro users, the next step is to keep building out its platform.
“Our expansion plan for development is to introduce a dollar savings service, Payscribe for Business. This is on our roadmap in 2023,” Philip said. “Growth on Payscribe has been steady, with revenue doubling every month with an average MRR of five per cent.”
