Moment, a pan-African fintech, today announced the close of its $22 million (around R364 million) Series A funding round, led by AlphaCode Venture Partners, with continued investment from General Catalyst, MultiChoice, and fresh investment from Canal+.
Since inception, Moment has raised $55 million (more than R900 million) to develop one of the continent’s most advanced payment infrastructure businesses, offering a comprehensive suite of payment collection and revenue retention solutions to corporate and enterprise merchants. The company will use the additional funding from this Series A round to deepen its network, enhance its platform and accelerate expansion across Africa.
Dominique Collett, General Partner at AlphaCode Venture Partners, explains, “Africa’s payment complexity has long been a hidden tax on commerce – on every business trying to grow here, and on every household trying to participate in the digital economy. Moment is dismantling that barrier in a way we haven’t seen before, at continental scale, compliantly, and with a product that the market’s largest enterprises have already validated. We’re backing Joel Yarbrough, Moment’s CEO, and his team as they build a defining piece of Africa’s financial infrastructure.”
Africa’s payment landscape is notoriously fragmented, with local payment behaviour varying dramatically across markets. In <a href="https://absafricatv.com/womens-day-in-south-africa-turns-70-with-equality-still-out-of-reach/" title="Women’s Day in <a href="https://absafricatv.com/egypt-and-south-africa-lead-african-tourism-and-aviation-growth/" title="Egypt and South Africa Lead African Tourism and Aviation Growth”>South Africa turns 70 with equality still out of reach”>South Africa, over two-thirds of payments are still made in person at retail locations despite high bank penetration. In Nigeria, instant bank transfers dominate, with strong competition from cash, cards, and digital wallets. In other markets, mobile money platforms have thrived due to low bank penetration, but are fragmented across dozens of operators, with no single provider able to offer merchants unified collections across all channels.
Yarbrough explains that Moment was built to solve this. “Within three years of launch, we are processing for 10 million people a month across some of Africa’s leading brands. We support the full spectrum of locally preferred digital payment methods as well as an in-person acceptance network spanning over two million physical locations. Our platform is highly resilient, and we process 600,000 transactions a day despite power and connectivity problems that plague the market. We’ve built a platform that can deliver on the particular challenges of the African market and help businesses get paid faster and at lower cost.”
Thomas Follin, Chief Diversification Officer at Canal+, commented, “Following Canal+’s acquisition of MultiChoice, we took a close look at Moment, and we were genuinely impressed. Moment has driven down cost and improved quality simultaneously. The business provides world-class technology for enterprise-grade subscription and billing customers that operate in Africa. Together we see a compelling opportunity to expand digital financial access across the continent.”
Moment offers billers and merchants such as insurers and subscription platforms an unrivalled suite of collection tools including recurring payments, customer outreach tools, failed payment recoveries across digital and in-person channels, and the ability to directly link Moment to their enterprise billing systems.
Moment lets their customers pay their way with any locally preferred payment method, spanning cards, mobile money, real-time bank transfers, eWallets, recurring bank debits, and in-person payments.
In addition to their advanced APIs, Moment also offers a variety of low- and no-code tools to get any merchant up and running quickly, allowing them to collect payments and retain their customers with limited technical effort.
Giulio di Giannatale, Technical Lead at Sanlam, added, ”What excites Sanlam most about Moment isn’t just what they do today, it’s the roadmap we’re building together. From embedded insurance in payment flows, to data-driven collection optimisation, to serving the mass market across Africa with flexible, customer-first payment options, Moment is a genuine innovation partner. This fundraise gives them the runway to accelerate what we’ve already proven works, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration across the Sanlam group.”
