Blockchain startup Payourse raises $600,000 pre-seed funding

Payourse has raised $600,000 in a pre-seed round to scale its products — Coinprofile and Simpa, hire more talents, and expand into new markets.

The Lagos-based blockchain startup provides tools aimed at facilitating the adoption of cryptocurrency in Africa. Payourse infrastructure helps African businesses to build user-friendly cryptocurrency and Web3 products.

Flori Ventures, Voltron Capital and Allegory Capital participated in the pre-seed funding round, as well as angel investors including Freeme Digital Limited CEO Michael Ugwu, CELO co-founders Marek Olszewski and Rene Reinsberg, Ventures Platform Founding Partner Kola Aina, Oluwatobi Anisere, and Angel Touch Holdings.

Payourse was co-founded in 2019 by Bashir Aminu (CEO), Hakeem Orewole (Technical co-founder), and John Anisere (CTO). And with their products — Coinprofile and Simpa, they are showing businesses what's possible with Payourse infrastructure.

"We believe the future of finance in Africa will be defined by crypto. Our goal is to accelerate access to crypto for everyone, by giving businesses the right financial tools to build user-friendly crypto products," Bashir said.

Coinprofile allows anyone from anywhere in the world to send crypto and the recipient will receive the equivalent fiat value in their bank account within minutes. In essence, it's a crypto-to-fiat exchange. And according to Bashir, they have users across the world including Finland and Mexico.

Simpa enables anyone to launch a crypto exchange within 30 minutes. It is an easy, fast, no-code way to quickly launch a fully customizable crypto exchange, Payourse explains. Data are currently being collected from users who will get early access when its beta version launch in the coming weeks.

Bashir explains that although Simpa users are direct competitors of Coinprofile, there's no conflict of interest. Simpa is the reason we decided to build Payourse, he said. "We want a flourishing market of crypto exchanges, where anyone that wants to build one [a crypto exchange] only needs liquidity, and we want to be the power behind them. We believe this is much more powerful than offering just an exchange of our own".

According to the release made available to Benjamindada.com, Coinprofile has over 5,000 users and has processed millions of dollars. It has grown 15,000% across all touchpoints (including payments, wallets and liquidity) since its launch and records 150% month-on-month growth rate.

"I worked closely with Bashir as a Visiting Partner at Flori Ventures. I've spent four batches at YC [Y Combinator] and rarely do I see a company with this kind of knockout performance and a founder who is willing to put in the hard work to continue to nurture it", Holly Liu, Visiting Partner at Flori Ventures, said. "Bashir is capable of meeting the demands of a crazy growth startup and also ramp up fundraising".

Voltron Capital Managing Partner Olumide Soyombo said: "We are excited to back the Payourse mission as we believe this team is a super technical team with subject matter expertise. The team is solving an important problem by providing the key infrastructure for Africans and African businesses to adopt crypto".

Michael Ugwu, who is also one the biggest NFTs collectors in Africa, added: "The team has outstanding technical execution ability. Their customer service is so top-notch that I am always proud when referring Coinprofile to friends, family, and colleagues — knowing the team would deliver".

“The team's experience and understanding of the marketplace put them in good stead to quickly deploy solutions and scale opportunities. I have been an angel in several companies, however, I am very bullish on the services Payourse is rolling out. Their year-on-year growth as well as customer growth and retention are testimony to this".

Bashir said the team is proud of the quality of investors that participated in its pre-seed round. "This new funding will help us improve our existing use-cases and then build more as we extend into new markets and accelerate crypto adoption on the continent", he concluded.

Featured Image: L–R Bashir Aminu, co-founder and CEO of Payourse,  and John Anisere, co-founder and CTO of Payourse.