South Africaʼs Scale raises $700,000 to accelerate expansion into Kenya, Zambia, and Cote d’Ivoire.
54 Collective, a sector-agnostic VC firm, and First Circle Capital led the funding round with participation from Sunny Side Venture Partners and a group of angel investors.
With the expansion, the startup intends to transform the payments industry, enabling critical payment use cases at speed.
Miranda Perumal, CEO of Scale, believes the investment is testament to Scale’s value proposition and the venture’s commitment to propelling African fintechs to new heights.
Founded a year ago by Barbara Woollams and Miranda Perumal, Scale is an issuer orchestration platform, providing infrastructure to simplify the card issuance process for businesses across the continent.
Overtime, the startup has strategically secured partnerships with investors, banking institutions, networks, and payment technology providers, positioning it as a modern card issuing orchestration and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) enabler.
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With the fintech market expected to reach $65 billion by 2030 and card issuance platforms projected to account for about 35% of all card-based transactions by 2029, Scale intends to leverage this to offer seamless and commercially sustainable solutions tailored to meet the specific needs of businesses and their customers across Africa.
Challenges within Africa’s payment system
Highlighting the challenges encountered within Africa’s payments system, Selma Ribica of First Circle Capital shared that the continent has the lowest payment card penetration per capita globally.
She explained that African fintechs and corporates seeking to enhance their product offerings by adding cards face several challenges which slows down their ability to launch and manage the service.
For instance, Union54, a Zambian fintech that provided a virtual card-issuing API, ceased operations following an attempted $1.2 billion chargeback frauds leading African startups that had previously used its card-issuing services to seek alternative solutions.
According to Ribica, “It takes approximately 18 months for any business to launch a card product, if achievable at all. This complex process requires technical expertise and a strong network across a wide range of partners for card management.”
Meanwhile, as Scale offers fintechs and corporates a Card-as-a-Service platform, a pre-approved card management scheme product including all the typical card features, Ribica expressed that, “Customers can plug into this product and launch a card within a few weeks, reducing time to revenue for Scale’s clients.”
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