South African fintech startup NjiaPay has raised $2.1 million in seed funding to expand its payment orchestration platform and scale its operations across Africa. The investment round was led by European B2B software investor Newion and comes at a time when businesses across the continent are looking for simpler and more reliable ways to manage digital payments.
The funding marks an important step for the young fintech company, which was founded in late 2024 by Jonatan Allback and Roderick Simons. In less than two years, NjiaPay has moved from an idea born out of operational challenges to a growing platform that aims to solve one of the most common problems in African commerce: fragmented payment systems.
Africa’s digital economy is expanding quickly, but payments remain complex. Businesses operating in different countries often need to connect with several payment providers. Each provider has its own technology, reporting tools and success rates. Managing these systems can increase costs and lead to failed transactions, especially for businesses that rely on recurring payments such as subscriptions.
NjiaPay’s technology is designed to simplify this process and help businesses improve their payment performance.
Solving Africa’s Payment Fragmentation
NjiaPay operates as a payments-as-a-service platform that allows companies to manage multiple payment providers through a single system.
Instead of replacing payment service providers, the platform acts as a neutral orchestration layer that sits on top of them. Through one application programming interface (API), businesses can connect to different providers without building separate integrations for each one.
The system then routes each transaction in real time to the payment provider most likely to process it successfully. This increases the chances that a payment will go through while reducing the number of failed transactions.
At the same time, NjiaPay consolidates reporting into a single dashboard. Businesses can see all their payment data in one place, making it easier to monitor performance and identify problems.
The platform also helps merchants surface the payment methods most relevant to each customer. This improves the customer experience and helps businesses complete more transactions successfully.
The idea for the platform came from the team behind the international calling app Talk360. As Talk360 expanded its services across African markets, its team encountered major difficulties managing multiple payment providers.
These challenges highlighted how fragmented the payments landscape is across the continent. Different countries rely on different financial systems, mobile money platforms and card networks. Managing these systems individually created technical complexity and operational costs.
To solve the problem, the team developed the orchestration technology that eventually became NjiaPay. The company was later spun off from Talk360 and became an independent business in December 2024.
New Funding to Accelerate Growth
Before securing the latest investment, NjiaPay had already raised $1 million in pre-seed funding in early 2025. That initial capital helped the company build its platform and begin entering the market.
Over the past year, the startup has also started building a growing client base that includes high-growth startups as well as global brands such as Talk360, Anytime Fitness and Melon Mobile.
The newly raised $2.1 million will support the next stage of the company’s growth. NjiaPay plans to use the funds to expand its engineering and commercial teams, strengthen integrations with payment partners and accelerate its expansion across African markets.
The company is positioning itself as a key infrastructure layer within Africa’s digital payments ecosystem. By combining global payment technology with local market knowledge, NjiaPay aims to help businesses operate more efficiently across borders.
Chief executive Jonatan Allback said the funding marks an important milestone for the company. He noted that over the past year it has become clear that payment orchestration is increasingly necessary for businesses operating in Africa’s diverse payment environment.
Allback also said that Newion’s experience in scaling enterprise software companies will help NjiaPay support merchants that want to improve their payment performance.
For Newion, the investment reflects the growing importance of infrastructure companies that simplify digital commerce.
Managing partner Mathijs de Wit said the firm was attracted to NjiaPay’s ability to address a fundamental challenge in African commerce. Despite rapid fintech innovation across the continent, payment systems remain fragmented and difficult for businesses to manage.
NjiaPay’s technology brings multiple payment providers into one coordinated system. This improves reliability and helps merchants process transactions more efficiently.
