A former CEO of MTN Group, Paul Edwards has secured a series-A funding round for his new venture, a fintech start-up called VantagePay.
VantagePay – formally Vantage Africa Limited – has secured the money from Crossfin Holdings, which has bought a “meaningful stake” in the company for an undisclosed sum.
Edwards is the founder and former chairman of Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), a pan-African and pan-Middle Eastern payment processor that he sold in 2016 to a company called Network International.
VantagePay was established in 2018 with a goal to provide payment and technology services across Africa. It’s headquartered in Mauritius, with offices in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and London, and provides payments solutions to Ghanaian banks, telecommunications operators and fintechs.
With the Crossfin investment, the plan now is to “expand rapidly across the African continent”, said Crossfin CEO Dean Sparrow in a statement. Crossfin’s shareholders include the Ethos Mid-Market Fund and Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital.
“Africa represents a huge market for mobile payments given the relatively high mobile phone penetration coupled with a relatively low penetration of financial services,” said Edwards in the statement. “VantagePay has incorporated the learnings of EMP and countries like China in developing a business model that enables cost-effective, deep penetration of payment services into African markets.”
