Flutterwave And Techstars Lead UK Fintech Dapio’s $3.4 Million Financing Round

Dapio, a cashless payment solutions provider based in the UK has raised $3.4 million to scale its ‘Tap to Pay’ solution for Android users in the UK and Europe. While the round saw the participation of Pact VC and Daniel Gould, venture partner at Asymmetry Ventures, it was co-led by Techstars and Flutterwave – Africa’s most valued startup rumoured to be more valued than top Nigerian banks.

Like other startups that have rebranded for peculiar reasons, Dapio was once known as Paymob, completely different from the Egyptian payments processor that goes by the same name.

Using Dapio, businesses can accept cashless payments in-store. Its amazing technology allows the back of any android smartphone to function as a direct card reading terminal powering payments. Dapio, therefore, provides a cost-effective option for accepting payments, especially for businesses that may not be willing or able to invest in hardware and point-of-sale systems because of the costs associated with them. With Dapio, the limitations surrounding accepting payments are greatly reduced.

In the UK, there are an estimated 3.2 million businesses under-maximizing their potential as a result of limitations arising from accepting payments and these businesses could benefit from Dapio’s technology. These businesses also are underserved by the traditional payments providers and Dapio could really change that…

Explaining how he thought of Dapio, co-founder and CEO Kosta Du explained that “I entered the U.K. a few years ago and initially struggled with getting financial services, like insurance, opening bank accounts, starting accepting payments. I exactly understand this pain and how difficult it is to go to a bank and go through the exact procedure applied to a big enterprise. My wife also faced a problem when having to send wire transfers to pay clients because these microbusinesses were not eligible for big machines. And I just thought there should be a more elegant solution for solopreneurs and micro-businesses to make payments.”

Dapio was finally founded in 2019 by Kosta Du and Grigory Gurbanov. Contactless payments have been making headway in the UK, making up about a quarter of all payments in the country.

Dapio is launching its ‘Tap to Pay’ app later this year and it would allow businesses to accept contactless payments with the tap of a card or mobile phone. It named ZmBIZI and Payment Plus as partners.

“If you are starting a business or an entrepreneur, you might need to go to a bank, open a bank account, ask for a machine that costs about $300. But what we invented is just a mobile app sitting on your phone. You, as a business owner or solopreneur, when you need to choose to charge a payment, you open the app while the customer’s card is placed behind the phone,” Kosta Du explained.

“The key differentiator between other players and us is that we’re keen to go through embedded finance. We don’t only want to reach out to businesses directly; instead, we want to embed our payment acceptance feature inside existing applications of fintechs, POS vendors, banks and telcos who will integrate our tech to all of their business clients,” he added explaining what differentiated Dapio from other rivals.

Dapio says it has about 20 merchants testing out its product and is planning to go live with over 3,500 merchants on its platform.