A B2B2C payments platform which aims to serve unbanked workers in emerging markets has closed a £13.2 million Series A funding round.
London-based dopay says it is meeting a strong and growing demand from businesses for cashless payroll and from employees for access to digital banking and electronic payments.
Worldwide, an estimated 200m businesses still rely on cash payments while their workers have no access to bank accounts. There are an estimated 1.7bn unbanked workers in emerging markets.
Through its virtual banking platform, dopay digitises cash payments from employers to workers and other beneficiaries. The platform enables staff to be paid in real time, even during weekends and holidays. Each account provides a prepaid debit card, in partnership with Mastercard, enabling 24/7 access to funds via ATM withdrawal.
The Series A funding round will enable dopay to continue scaling rapidly in its initial market, Egypt, while building a range of financial services in addition to cashless payroll and prepaid cards for employees.
The round was led by Force Over Mass Capital, FMO and NN Group. Mbuyu Capital and Alder Tree Investments were also significant participants.
“The value of our Series A funding confirms the investment community’s confidence in the dopay offer,” said founder and CEO Frans van Eersel.
“Our commercial validity through our B2B2C model is clear, and our technology capability is proven and strong. Egypt is the biggest market in the MENA region. We will serve a rapidly growing number of Egyptian businesses, from SMEs to major corporations, and their employees.
“Our dopay leadership is world class, with successful creators of billion-dollar payments businesses on the board. We are ready to aggressively grow our solutions, leveraging up- and cross-selling opportunities, as we increase dopay’s range of services and partners across MENA.”
Wouter Volckaert, chief investment officer at Force Over Mass Capital, said: “Egypt has around 2.4 million individual businesses and 104 million people, some 67% of whom do not have a bank account, while 94% have no access to credit.
“The dopay business model engages with business owners in the first instance, meaning they don’t have to attract individual customers. Each company signing up with dopay brings an entire workforce in a single transaction, and this is a very strong growth driver.
“Their new platform provides frictionless onboarding for employees, while enabling dopay to scale their business at pace.”