Ozow provides an automated open-banking payments platform that lets consumers select Ozow, choose their bank, log into internet banking, and complete payments in a few clicks. The platform serves more than 47 million bank account holders and thousands of merchants across over 100 industries, including clients such as MTN, Vodacom, Shoprite Group, Takealot and Uber. Ozow is free for individual users; merchants can use the gateway free for the first 12 months or up to $65,000 in processing value per month, while distributors and resellers pay a percentage fee (1.5–2.5%) per successful transaction. The company processes over $100 million in transaction volume per month and reports 100% year-on-year growth since its 2019 Series A, with new user growth in excess of 140,000 per month. Future plans funded by the round include driving open-banking and Rapid Payment Programme (RPP) adoption with regulators, expanding the team from 100 to 250 (including hires in a new European office), pursuing mergers and acquisitions, and pan-African expansion into Namibia, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya within six months. Ozow (formerly i-Pay) provides bank-to-bank automated instant EFTs, positioning its payment technology as faster and superior to other market solutions. The company says transactions processed grew 141% in the past 12 months and has completed over one million transactions per month since March. Product development updates include a Xero integration and a tokenised solution with a pilot planned with Flow Living and a market launch scheduled for August. Ozow has added partners such as Clickatell and Devcode and onboarded merchants including MTN, SuperSonic, Le Creuset, Homechoice, Intercare, Flight Centre, IFX Brokers Holdings, Silulumazi and Grow Biz Wealth. The company is pursuing expansion across other African markets while consolidating its presence in South Africa and has recently entered Namibia.

Total raised

$48M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Nov 2021