Raba Partnership Leads API Startup Connecting African Businesses Thepeer’s $2.1 Million Seed Funding Round

Theeper is an API-based fintech startup that’s connecting businesses. The startup combines data and science to provide its offering. Theeper provides the infrastructure needed to power fintech businesses, from small to large ones.

Founded by Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye and Michael Okoh in August 2021, the startup says its APIs provide an alternate network where fintechs and businesses tap into a different set of products which they can integrate into their platforms –apps, and websites, to power the movement of money.

Theeper has secured $2.1 million in a seed round led by Raba Partnership just a year after it got $220,000 in a pre-seed funding round that had investors such as Paystack’s Ezra Olubi and Edenlife’s Prosper Otemuyiwa.

The seed funding round also received participation from Rali Cap Ventures, Stitch, Chipper Cash, BYLD Ventures, Timon Capital, etc.

Theeper first launched with Send which allows customers of fintechs and businesses who integrate the offering onto their platforms to send money easily and seamlessly using identifiers such as usernames, email addresses, etc.

While explaining the reason for starting Theeper with CTO Michael Okoh, CEO Kosisochukwu Chike Ononye said that “I made a purchase from a vendor and couldn’t pay after using several apps and couldn’t move money from one wallet where I had cash to another.”

“After we launched our first product, we went back to the drawing board because there were things we needed to get right. In that process, we discovered more consumer and business problems,” he added.

Theeper went on to partner with Africa’s most valued startup Flutterwave and built on the unicorn’s platform to extend its reach. Thanks to this partnership, Theeper has launched two additional B2B2C products – Direct Change and Checkout.

The first provides the possibility for customers of about 15 businesses to fund their wallets from each other. The other is available on websites of businesses such as clothing stores and online food stores and as the name implies, it allows customers to checkout when they shop online from platforms such as Bitsika, Chipper Cash, Paga wallets, and Eversend.

Theeper claims to have month-on-month transaction growth of 161 percent since its launch last year. Its monthly transaction volume has grown more than 65 times and is now standing as eight figures in dollars.

The CEO also said that “We see our product as a platform powered by APIs that helps connect fintechs, consumers, and businesses by offering seamless money movement. Today, there are nearly 600 fintechs across the continent, most of which operate siloed wallets. Our goal is to make it possible to connect and make payments from any wallet. We are building an operating system so that businesses can offer more services to their customers.”

“With the proliferation of consumer and B2B fintechs across Africa, Thepeer is building a foundational API-based payments layer where fintechs can enable money movement natively from within their respective wallets and apps. We are incredibly excited to support this ambitious team building a next-generation network,” George Rzepecki, founder of Raba Partnership said in a statement juxtaposing Theeper’s goal of unifying Africa’s wallet ecosystem to how Flutterwave appeared on the scene.