4DX Ventures and Flutterwave Invest In Africa’s CinetPay In $2.4M Round

CinetPay has secured $2.4 million in seed funding with venture capital funding from 4DX Ventures and unicorn Flutterwave.

The startup, a payment gateway that allows e-merchants and merchants to accept mobile money and other payments in Francophone Africa, was founded by Idriss Monthe and Daniel Dindji in 2016.

It acts as an online and point-of-sale payment solution for merchants to process payment from more than 130 payment operators — mobile money, bank cards, wallets. 

On the platform, merchants have to open an account and upload their KYC, integrate Cinet’s APIs, and collect payments. 

It came after CEO Monthe experienced issues collecting payments at his previous startup, CinetCore, a site specializing in selling online domain names.

“When we launched our website to sell domain names online, we faced difficulty in collecting online payment after creating many PayPal accounts which were blocked by PayPal because we were in Africa,” the CEO told TechCrunch.

“But the cost that we make is that in Francophone Africa, 80% of the population have a mobile money account. And between 10 and 20% of people have a bank account and credit cards.

“We decided to explore the tract of mobile money and create a payment gateway, where we aggregate all mobile money available in Francophone Africa to enable merchants to accept online payments.”