International calling app Talk360 has secured $4m in funding as it prepares to launch a new pan-African payment platform in mid-2022.
Talk360 enables people around the world to make reliable and affordable calls to any landline or mobile phone worldwide.
The seed round of funding was led by leading African venture capital investor HAVAÍC, 4Di Capital and several angel investors.
The angel investors included several unicorn founders and executives such as Gaston Aussems (ex-Mollie), Robert Kraal (ex-Adyen), Gabriel de Montessuss (President WorldPay International) and Marnix van der Ploeg (ex-Booking.com and EQT).
Talk360 was co-founded in 2016 by South African venture builder Dean Hiine, Dutch entrepreneurs Hans Osnabrugge and Jorne Schamp. With offices in South Africa, The Netherlands, India and Nigeria, it connected more than 2 million people in 2021.
While the Talk360 app is seeing rapid growth on the continent, with a growing number of paying users, the company said accessibility has been an issue for the 500 million underserviced people.
Users either don’t have online banking to buy Talk360 airtime, or their local currencies or payment methods are simply not supported. The new payment platform due to launch aims to address the continued issue of inaccessibility by providing users with the option to buy products and services using any currency and more than 160 payment methods. It will also be opened to other service providers.
Talk360 said it also aims to accelerate its mission to create jobs and reduce unemployment in the communities which it serves through its rapidly growing agent network. “By creating jobs and micro entrepreneurship opportunities within different communities, we learned how we can help African consumers and businesses connect with their loved ones,” said Osnabrugge.
Hiine said, “From the start, our mission was to bridge distance and connect lives by offering reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use digital services, delivered in a localised manner to all communities, particularly emerging countries, so they can connect to the world…
“We now have enough traction to attract internationally renowned investors to expand our footprint and allow other companies to use our unique single checkout payment platform for all of Africa.”
In May this year, Interswitch, a company pioneering the shift to digitised payments in Africa, raised $110m in funding.
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