Emerging economies face trade deficits that cause demand for the dollar, which dominates global trade to exceed supply. This imbalance raises costs and delays trade. In Africa, the problem is exacerbated by the shortage of tech solutions addressing the liquidity needs of large enterprises and multinationals, with many cross-border payment platforms opting to build consumer-facing products.
Enter Waza, a Y Combinator-backed payment and liquidity platform that is emerging from stealth with $8 million in seed money. The startup claims to make it easier for African businesses and traders to manage and pay their suppliers globally. It says it’s targeting a $7 trillion market with the potential to generate $250 billion in revenue.
As TechCrunch reported earlier this year, cross-border fintech and payments is currently a hot segment, particularly for Y Combinator-backed startups in the last batches. And the market, projected to surpass $250 billion by 2027, is seeing fintechs increasingly challenging traditional banks, especially in the B2B sector.
Waza, which began its operations in January 2023 after participating in Y Combinator’s winter batch that month, will aim to capitalize on this trend and make its mark in the global payments market, starting with Africa.
In its first month, Waza’s total payment volume amounted to $280,000, co-founder and CEO Maxwell Obi told TechCrunch. In May, the fintech processed up to $70 million in monthly payment volume, translating to $700 million in annualized transaction volume, he added. The CEO also said that Waza’s transaction volumes and revenues, which come from FX spread and a 0.75% to 1% take rate, are growing by an average of 20% monthly.
The startup facilitates business payments and liquidity management across six continents for hundreds of clients, cutting across three categories with different needs.
First are multinational organizations like U.S.-headquartered airlines that operate locally in Africa with liquidity issues; second are importers and traders that transact with suppliers from countries like India, China and the U.K.; third are other fintechs and developers that need API infra to build their cross-border payment solutions. Fintechs providing similar solutions include AZA Finance, Verto and Conduit, which recently entered Africa from Latin America.
“Cross-border payments in the context of trade is for businesses to pay their suppliers fast and expect the product to come quickly as exchange rate plays a part in how much they make. So our value proposition has always been on affordability and speed of settlement,” said Obi on a call, also ascribing Waza’s global banking relationships and partnerships as a moat. “We also have much more control of our payment infrastructure versus the competition out there. It’s why we’re able to be a cheaper option out there in the market, and that’s how we’ve been able to corner our customers so far.”
Before founding Waza, Obi held various roles as a founder and operator. He co-founded Amplify, a Nigerian fintech acquired by Carbon, where he worked briefly. Afterward, he joined Zepz subsidiary Sendwave.
Obi, who navigated partnerships and regulatory relationships for Sendwave before and after its $500 million acquisition by Zepz, tells me that it was during his time at the remittance startup he had the idea for Waza. As head of business, he engaged with various partners, banks and fintechs across Africa, Asia and Latin America — markets where Sendwave operated. He said one thing always came up: the need for a service to handle global supplier and vendor payments. Sendwave couldn’t offer that as a peer-to-peer remittance company.
“I thought to dig into the space to learn more. I went on the ground, talked to different players, importers, exporters, large corporates and enterprises, and the depth of the pain point these players faced began to take shape,” Obi said. “It was a bigger problem than I imagined, and I decided to do something about it.”
Obi founded Waza with CTO Emmanuel Igbodudu, a senior engineer at Revolut who led the Vaults team. Igbodudu also worked at Carbon and held engineering roles at prominent Nigerian fintechs like Moniepoint and Fairmoney.
Both founders have strong technical backgrounds, which will be valuable as the fintech expands into other trade finance and cross-border payment solutions to diversify its revenue streams. “We want to do one thing and do it well before evolving into other verticals,” he said. “And that’s moving money from point A to point B in the fastest, cheapest way possible. But we’re also at the stage where we must build products that cut across other verticals addressing B2B payments.”
Without revealing specifics, Obi mentioned that Waza might develop a banking product for businesses — similar to Brex or Mercury for Africa — that includes credit or financing or a stablecoin banking product for the digital economy.
The seed investment will fund these initiatives and expand into new markets beyond its current operations in Ghana and Nigeria. The round includes $3 million in equity from Y Combinator, Byld Ventures, Norrsken Africa, Heirloom VC, Plug and Play Tech Center, and Olive Tree Capital. Lagos- and New York-based Timon Capital provided $5 million in venture debt financing, money that Waza will use to pilot trade financing for its large enterprise clients.
“The Waza team has deep experience around cross-border flows and they are going after one of the bigger opportunities in frontier markets,” said Chris Muscarella, managing director of Timon Capital, on the investment.
