In the evolving financial landscape of the Middle East and Africa (MEA), MoneyHash has successfully garnered $4.5 million in seed funding for its innovative payment orchestration platform, designed specifically for the region’s merchants. The MEA region is confronted with several challenges including payment fraud, diminished checkout conversion rates, and elevated rates of transaction failures, largely due to its fragmented payment ecosystem and the continuous evolution of regulations.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital payments, yet the region still grapples with underdeveloped infrastructure. MoneyHash plans to utilize this recent investment to bolster its technology and stimulate growth across the region, adding to its $3.5 million pre-seed funding received two years prior.
Nader Abdelrazik, the CEO of MoneyHash, highlights the company’s unique position in a market where digital payments account for just 10% of all transactions. Looking forward, he anticipates a period of growth but recognizes the obstacles that lie ahead. Abdelrazik stresses the importance of patience and the necessity for ongoing education to successfully navigate the complexities of the rapidly expanding payments market.
MoneyHash’s payment orchestration platform enhances operational efficiency by consolidating payment processes via unified payment APIs. This platform offers a tailored checkout experience, enables transaction routing optimized for fraud prevention and failure rate reduction, and provides a centralized dashboard for reporting. In the fintech sector, similar entities include Revio, Stitch, Credrails, and Recital, each contributing innovations in payment solutions.
During an exclusive email conversation with TechCrunch, Abdelrazik discussed MoneyHash’s engagements with merchants over the past four years, drawing attention to the significant disparities in payment failure rates throughout the region, which challenge the utility of average-based approaches. He pointed out a common underestimation among customers regarding the complexity of payment systems, emphasizing that many issues leading to payment leakages are, in fact, solvable.
How MoneyHash Helps Merchants Thrive
Merchants are growing more rapidly than their partner payment service providers (PSPs), who face the challenge of navigating strict regulations and thus often experience delays in rolling out new products and customizations. To address this, MoneyHash has intensified its collaborations with PSPs, especially those catering to enterprises and focusing on customer needs.
“Businesses value our extensive network of integrations not just for its breadth but also for our expertise. Realizing that all these integrations were developed in-house, they came to appreciate our team’s depth of knowledge and expertise. They rely on us to answer tough questions in the payments space, confident that our collaboration makes them future-ready,” Abdelrazik, who co-founded MoneyHash with Mustafa Eid, remarked.
He further emphasized the importance of team expertise, stating, “Team expertise is crucial for us. We generally hire people with backgrounds in payments and/or technology, even for roles that aren’t technically oriented. This approach has proven highly effective, as it builds a team that earns the trust of our customers through their specialized knowledge and expertise in the critical area of payments.”
After a successful Beta launch in 2022, which saw engagement from prominent regional entities such as Foodics, Rain, and Tamatem, MoneyHash unveiled its enterprise suite last October, aimed at servicing large enterprises. Over the last year, the fintech, which integrates with various payment gateways and processors including Checkout, Stripe, Ayden, Amazon Pay, Tap, and ValU, has significantly expanded its network of integrations, tripled its revenue, and boosted its processing volume by an impressive 3,000%.
Currently, MoneyHash serves 50 active paying customers and does not offer free tiers, except for a sandbox environment mainly utilized by over 100 potential clients in the evaluation phase. The company’s pricing model incorporates both Software as a Service (SaaS) and transaction fees, starting at $500 plus a 0.4% transaction fee. For larger enterprises, while the SaaS fees escalate, transaction fees diminish substantially owing to higher volumes, as explained by Abdelrazik.
The seed funding round for MoneyHash was jointly led by COTU Ventures and Sukna Ventures, with contributions from RZM Investment, Dubai Future District Fund, VentureFriends, Tom Preston-Werner (GitHub’s founder and an early investor in Stripe), and a consortium of strategic investors and operators.
Amir Farha, a general partner at COTU Ventures, expressed his enthusiasm for the investment, underscoring his belief in the untapped potential of digital payments within the MEA region. He is confident that MoneyHash’s platform will be pivotal in advancing the growth of digital payments across the region, empowering both international and local merchants to explore new revenue opportunities.
Farha articulated his continued support for the MoneyHash team, commending their consistent excellence in execution, not only in attracting prominent mid-market and enterprise customers but also in enhancing value throughout the entire ecosystem, even amidst challenging market conditions.
