Duplo, a business-to-business payment platform that makes it easier for African businesses to pay each other, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding to launch new products and expand into new business verticals in Nigeria.
The seed funding round included Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Tribe Capital, Commerce Ventures, Basecamp Fund, and Y Combinator. Oui Capital also re-invested after participating in the previous round.
Since going live in January 2022, Duplo has seen notable traction with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) distributors and finance teams of midsize and enterprise businesses, helping them to digitize and simplify the way money moves between them and their business partners.
FMCG distributors can onboard retailers in their network on the Duplo platform, making it easier for them to collect payments digitally and access real-time insights into business performance.
They can also automate payments to vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers, with instant payments enabling them to transact in larger quantities.
Duplo’s end-to-end solution automates the back office processes of generating and processing invoices, receiving and approving bills, collecting and disbursing funds, and completing account reconciliation.
Duplo also works seamlessly with all major accounting and ERP platforms such as Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, QuickBooks, and Sage, and payments processed through Duplo are automatically synced with these platforms in real-time.
In the last 3 months, the company has increased the number of businesses on its platform by 1000%.
The startup says that its Total Payment Volume has also increased by 4200% in the last 5 months.
B2B payments in Sub-Saharan Africa represent a $1.5 trillion market. This is according to the World Bank.
“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 maximize 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,” says Yele Oyekola, CEO and co-founder of Duplo
