In order to introduce new products and enter new business sectors in Nigeria, Duplo, a business-to-business payment network that enables African companies of all sizes to transact with one another, has acquired $4.3 million in early capital.
Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator were among the investors in the seed fundraising round. After taking part in the prior round, Oui Capital also made a new investment.
Duplo claimed to have gained traction with FMCG distributors and finance teams of midsize and enterprise organizations since coming live in January 2022, assisting them in digitizing and streamlining the way money is transferred between them and their business partners.
FMCG distributors may add merchants to the Duplo platform, making it simpler for them to accept payments online and gain real-time business performance information. Additionally, they can automate payments to suppliers, manufacturers, and vendors, and quick payments let them do more transactions in larger volumes.
Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the back office procedures of creating and processing invoices, accepting and approving bills, gathering and disbursing payments, and concluding account reconciliation for finance departments. Every major accounting and ERP platform, including Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, QuickBooks, and Sage, is compatible with Duplo, and payments processed through Duplo are instantly synchronized with these systems.
The sub-Saharan African market for B2B payments is estimated by the World Bank to be worth $1.5 trillion. However, the payment procedure is still primarily manual, which is expensive and incredibly inefficient for enterprises. Additionally, invoices are often generated and received manually, which adds to the administrative burden on business owners and consumes additional time and energy that could be used to grow their companies.
44 percent of firms still had to wait longer than 24 hours to get payments from clients and business partners, according to a recent Duplo analysis that featured the perspectives of more than 1,000 business owners from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt.
34 percent of businesses receive payments within 7 days, 17 percent within 30 days, and 3 percent within more than 30 days. Businesses face a big problem because they can’t always take advantage of their chances for growth and sales because of cash flow issues brought on by complicated payment procedures.
According to CEO and co-founder of Duplo, Yele Oyekola, “we have seen a lot of innovation in consumer payments in Africa in recent years but business-to-business payments have largely stayed the same. We strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to catalyse growth and maximise business opportunities across the continent by removing the bottlenecks that hinder the seamless flow of money between businesses and we are excited to have raised funding from this exciting group of investors to deliver this much-needed transformation”.
“The Duplo team has built an incredible suite of products that improve how businesses make and receive payments from one another, and the growth that the company has experienced since our initial pre-seed investment in 2021 has been nothing short of impressive,” said Peter Oriaifo, principal at Oui Capital. “We are thrilled to support Duplo once more because of this.”
