Nigerian fintech startup, Azapay, wants to make cardless payments seamless

Quick show of hands if you’ve ever had to wait while your Uber driver or supermarket cashier confirmed your payment. I have experienced this several times and usually scroll through my phone to pass the time.

Jacquelyne Madu, founder and CEO of two-year-old fintech startup Azapay, was not so lucky.

In a place like Nigeria, a man whose payment takes some time to reflect may not be harassed, but that is not always the case for women. They can be offended, and after too many incidents, she decided to build a solution that enabled cardless payments.

Make lemonade from lemons

Many who have worked with software developers are familiar with the frequent disappointments and misinterpretations of product requirements. Growing up, Madu wanted to be a radio presenter, and eventually landed roles Nigeria and Sound City, among others.

Along the way, a developer made excuses for not delivering on a project at work. Frustrated, she wondered how hard it could be to create a website and decided to try building them. Starting with WordPress, she was soon able to create simple websites and soon began learning the basics of programming.

“I was working on a project at the time and we hired a web developer and he just kept making excuses and raising more money. I thought, what is in this web development thing that I can’t even do? So I went through YouTube.

“I started with WordPress development and then grew to understand HTML, CSS and JavaScript. So the whole idea of ​​getting into technology was really someone proving difficult and I decided to try it out.”

According to a report by Google and the International Finance Corporation, one in five developers in Africa are women. With 80,000 developers, only 18% of developers in Nigeria are women, but this did not deter Madu from moving forward.

She didn’t stop at building websites, eventually founding Hotbox Technologies, the parent company of Azapay, to provide software development and consulting services for businesses.

Make cardless payments seamless

Azapay, founded in 2020, was borne out of Madu’s personal experience of losing his debit cards, struggling to replace them and being harassed by drivers.

“I’m the person who doesn’t like to walk around with my card because most times I put my card in my back pocket and I end up breaking it, bending it or losing the card and then it takes a long time to get a new card.

“I’ve had situations where I’ve made a transition to an Uber driver and the guy locks me in his car because he hasn’t seen an alarm and because of my gender it’s easy for him to start insulting. I always thought there should be a better way for these guys to accept transfer payments.

“Azapay is a payment solution centered around cardless solutions that bridges the existing gap between businesses and customers when it comes to verifying transfer payments and making it easy and seamless for both parties.”

Although several businesses accept bank transfers for customer purchases, the method is full of challenges. For example, companies have to deal with fraudulent transfers that they may not be able to detect. The speed of these transfers can also be a problem.

While Nigeria’s banking system is often praised for the speed and ease of transfers, reflection on the recipient’s end can often take hours and, in some cases, days. Neither of these scenarios is ideal for businesses or their customers, and Azapay claims it can fix this.

With Azapay, users make a payment using a Azatag, an email or a phone number. This is similar to how Pocket, a subsidiary of Piggytech Global, operates. But Madu believes that the market is big enough for any player.

Although work on Azapay began in 2020, the company spent most of 2021 in beta testing and now has five businesses using the solution at 200 locations in Lagos, Nigeria.

One of the ways Azapay combats the problem of fraudulent payments is through a cardless device that acts as a Point of Sale (PoS) device. When a customer makes a purchase, the merchant generates a Nigeria Uniform Bank Account Number (NUBAN) number directly associated with the transaction that the customer will use for payment.

In addition, the startup provides a dashboard for businesses to track transactions while gaining valuable insights into their business. According to Madu, the startup is trying to be “both the Cash App and the Paypal of Africa.”

Azapay enables individuals to perform most banking transactions, including sending and receiving payments, requesting money and saving money. The startup also has an agency banking product – CashMe – which it claims has a 99.9% uptime and will eliminate fraud.

Azapay charges merchants between 0.3% and 1% of a transaction’s value, while transactions below ₦1,000 incur no merchant charges. For individuals, in-app transactions are free, but a ₦30 transaction fee is charged for out-of-app transactions.

The startup, which currently serves over 2,000 individual users, hopes to reach 100,000 users by the end of the year as it continues to build on the successes it has recorded so far.