South Africa’s Revio raises $1M+ seed funding

Cape Town-based Revio, a payments API company, has raised $1.1 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to solve payment failures in emerging markets.

Led by  SpeedInvest, with participation from Ralicap, The Fund, Two Culture Capital, and strategic angel investors from Sequoia Capital, Quona Capital and Circle Payments, Revio says the investment will enable it to launch new products, expand the team, and enter new markets. This is Revio’s first institutional funding round since emerging from stealth in March 2021. 

Founded in 2020, Revio helps businesses reduce revenue losses through failed payments and customer churn. With its three core products, Payment Orchestration, Billing Automation, and Smart Collections, Revio allows businesses offer multiple payment options, automate billing and manage customer churn. Revio also offers its clients full visibility with real-time customer segmentation and analytics dashboards to allow them monitor direct collections efforts and increase customer lifetime value.

Revio says Africa’s fragmented payments landscape, higher dispute rates, invalid or expired card details, false-positive fraud checks, and insufficient funds cause up to 30% of digital payments in Africa to fail. The global average is 0.7%. Per a company statement, “An estimated $14 billion in recurring revenue is uncollected each year, and the continent has a 320% higher churn rate than mature markets.”

In a press statement shared with TechCabal, Alvaro Perezcano, FinTech Investor at SpeedInvest, Revio’s lead investor noted, “Having been part of multiple payment orchestration and billing automation platforms across the world, we can see the incredible potential of using this toolset to increase revenue recovery for businesses in a region where three out of ten payments fail. With a team as experienced as Revio’s at the helm of tackling this massive opportunity we’re convinced that they can fundamentally change the payments landscape for businesses in their target markets and are excited to be backing them on that journey.”

Since Revio commenced operations one year ago, the firm says it already has a client roll call of more than 50. Revio’s enterprise clients include insurers, telcos, retailers, subscription software and media companies, asset leasing or financing businesses, and alternative lenders. The company says its products have found favour with recurring revenue businesses with high transactional volumes.

Revio’s API allows businesses to accept and reconcile more than 30 payment methods. These include: the major mobile money products, card schemes, direct bank payments and wallets in 25 countries in Africa markets. The firm plans to expand its offerings to Latin America.

Said Nicole Dunn, Revio’s COO, “Customers are treated like gold when they are being acquired, and like criminals when they fail to pay. We’re building a better collections system, where businesses can recover earned revenue while treating customers fairly and with empathy.”

Revio investor, Hayden Simmons, partner at RaliCap Ventures said, “Revio is building a category-leading product to enable businesses to better manage their cash flow and accelerate growth”, adding that Revio “will play a critical role in contributing to the growth of subscription commerce and companies with pan-African scale.” 

“We have ambitions to build a global business that helps businesses reduce failed payments and recover revenue they’ve earned. We know that growing a business is hard, but getting paid shouldn’t be. I’m excited to partner with our investor community to accelerate our growth and the value that we deliver to our customers,” said Ruaan Botha, Revio CEO.