Months after the initial seed round closed, Talk360, a South African Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) startup, raised an additional $3 million, bringing the total investment raised in the round to $7 million.
Talk360’s latest investors include Allan Gray E2 Ventures (AGEV), Kalon Venture Partners, E4E Africa, Endeavor, existing lead investor HAVAÍC and several angel investors, including Tjaart van der Walt and Coenraad Jonker.
The company plans to use the new funding to launch a pan-African payments platform next year and increase its VoIP market share. Talk360’s payment platform integrates “all payment options” across the continent – creating a variety of localized payment options, making it easier for international and local businesses to sell to buyers in Africa.
“The new platform will allow users across the continent to purchase products and services using any currency and over 160 payment methods. It will also be open to other merchants,” Talk360 said in a statement.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Talk360 said its decision to become a payment aggregator was prompted by the challenges it faced in implementing digital payment options, which impacted the bottom line of its Internet call business.
The startup’s co-founder and managing director for Africa, Dean Hein, told TechCrush that digital payment methods in Africa are fragmented and some involve lengthy and complex processes, hurting conversion rates.
In the year Hein, who co-founded the startup in 2016 with Hans Osnabrugge and Jørn Schamp, hopes to leverage the payments platform to enable more people on the continent to make international calls through the app. Talk360 users make calls for a fee, the platform is built in, requires the initiator app and internet – a smartphone – to call.
“Our mission is to bridge distance and connect lives by providing reliable, affordable and easy-to-use digital services for all communities, especially developing countries, to connect with the world,” he said.
The startup has a network of agents that allow users to buy airtime vouchers from 750,000 physical points of sale, including PesaPoint in Kenya and Flash in South Africa.
But we’re not just addressing socio-economic issues: we’re also providing opportunities for micro-entrepreneurship and income generation to our growing network of agents across the country.
The company’s Internet calling app has connected 2.3 million people worldwide this year, with 167% in customers and 130% in revenue. The app has active users in over 170 countries, including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh.
“We invested more in Talk360 based on its strong progress so far in the South African market and its potential in the rest of Africa. Since our initial investment, the company has shown impressive growth, and has shown a real ability to solve the distribution challenge in Africa. The company provides users with relevant services for their customers and We’ve seen customers convert to payroll by making it easily, affordably, securely and reliably accessible.
