Duplo, Inter-Africa B2B Payment Platform Secures $5.6 Million Funding

In order to introduce new products and enter new business sectors in Nigeria, Duplo, a business-to-business payment network that makes it simpler for African businesses of all kinds to pay each other, has secured $4.3 million in seed funding.

This comes just seven months after it disclosed a pre-seed investment of $1.3 million, bringing the total amount of funds raised to $5.6 million.

The Duplo seed funding round included Soma Capital, Liquid2 Ventures, Basecamp Fund, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, and Y Combinator. After taking part in the prior round, Oui Capital also made a new investment.

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More on Duplo seed funding round

Co-founders Yele Oyekola and Tunde Akinnuwa launched Duplo in September 2021 but went live January 2022 

Commenting on the company funding, the CEO, Oyekola said Duplo’s goal is to foster cross-border transactions within the continent, particularly between businesses, to aid faster growth, and he’s confident the new Funding will help them achieve that.

In his words: “We have seen a lot of innovation in consumer payments in Africa in recent years, but business-to-business payments have largely stayed the same. 

We strongly believe that there is a great opportunity to catalyse growth and maximise business opportunities across the continent by removing the bottlenecks that hinder the seamless flow of money between businesses and we are excited to have raised Funding from this exciting group of investors to deliver this much-needed transformation.”

Additionally, Duplo is looking to diversify its market. The platform first focused on the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector, but as interest in the construction, telecom, and these significant mid-sized enterprise firms has grown, they have laid the groundwork to spread throughout the continent, perhaps in the next nine to twelve months.

The Principal at Oui Capital, Peter Oriaifo, also commented on the seed funding round, 

“The Duplo team has built an incredible suite of products that improve how businesses make and receive payments from each other, and the growth that the company has experienced since our initial pre-seed investment in 2021 has been nothing short of impressive. It is for this reason that we are excited to back Duplo once more.”

Duplo overview performance 

Duplo has gained a lot of traction among FMCG distributors and the finance departments of midsize and enterprise organisations, assisting them in digitising and streamlining the transfer of funds between them and their business partners.

FMCG distributors can add merchants to the Duplo platform, making it simpler for them to accept payments online and gain real-time business performance information.

They can automate payments to suppliers, manufacturers, and vendors, and quick payments let them do more transactions in larger volumes.

Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the back office procedures of creating and processing invoices, accepting and approving bills, gathering and disbursing payments, and concluding account reconciliation for finance departments.

Every major accounting and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platform, including Microsoft Dynamics, Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP), QuickBooks, and Sage, is compatible with Duplo, and payments processed through Duplo are instantly synchronised with these systems.

Businesses can save up to 50% on administrative duties like account reconciliation and up to 85% on payment-related costs by using Duplo.

The platform now has 1000% more businesses than it did three months ago. The total payment volume has also climbed by 4200% in the previous five months.

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