Verto, a Nigerian B2B payments platform that allows small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to pay their suppliers in over 200 countries and 39 currencies, has secured a US$10 million Series A investment to expand its geographical reach.
Verto, founded in 2018 by Ola Oyetayo and Anthony Oduwole, is a fast and seamless worldwide payments platform that employs a marketplace solution to efficiently match businesses, especially when one of the currency pairs is an illiquid currency.
Businesses can send cross-border B2B payments at FX rates up to nine times cheaper than they could through traditional banks using Verto’s three main products: payments, exchange, and multi-currency account. Businesses can also hold money in 39 currencies and make instant cross-border payments to other companies on the Verto network in real-time.
On a yearly basis, it assists more than 2,000 customers, ranging from startups to SMEs to huge corporations, in facilitating billions of dollars in transactions.
“While traditional peer-to-peer payment platforms often have transaction limits, the Verto platform facilitates payment volumes that are appropriate for MSMEs,” Oyetayo said.
The startup has now raised a US$10 million Series A funding round led Quona Capital, alongside The Treasury, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), TMT Investments, Unicorn Growth Capital, Zrosk Investments and P1 Ventures. Verto will use the investment to continue building out its platform, and accelerate its geographical expansion into other emerging markets in Africa.
“We plan to expand our presence in emerging markets with this fund through a suite of top-class tech stacks,” said Oduwole. “Geographically, this is an essential step towards our mission of “making international payments simple, fast and cheap. Our purposefully built tech infrastructure and payment rails enable instant cross-border payments in a way that is really exciting for businesses.”
Low visibility and traceability, slow speeds, and high costs of cross-border payments, according to Monica Brand Engel, co-founder and managing partner at Quona Capital, are all barriers to SME growth in global and emerging markets.
“Verto’s innovative platform addresses these pain points, removing friction to make international payments fast, simple, and reliable – a key component of SME growth. We are proud to support Verto in this important and impactful work,” she said.
