Dubai-based fintech startup Ziina, a pioneer in payment solutions, has raised $22 million in its Series A funding round led by Altos Ventures. The company, founded in 2020, has grown to support 50,000 retail and business customers.
PC: TechCrunch
From Peer-to-Peer Payments to SME-Focused Solutions
Ziina launched as a P2P payment application targeting making life easy for retail customers when it comes to splitting bills. But as the application was gaining momentum, it found its market especially among small businesses that wanted to use the platform for making and receiving payments. To that end, Ziina developed two segments: Ziina Business for SMEs and Ziina Personal for P2P payments.
To the growing demand of the business segment, Ziina introduced a suite of new products that included a payment gateway integrated with WooCommerce, Shopify, and others; QR code-based POS; social media networks for making payments. Such innovations also included CRM functionalities that help businesses manage customer data and track customer interactions effectively.
Growth and Investor Confidence Amid a Global Funding Slowdown
Despite the global slowdown in funding, Ziina successfully closed $22 million in Series A funding. That has evidenced investors’ confidence in the growth trajectory presented by customers, growing 34% month on month, with revenues rising tenfold in the last year alone.
Ziina CEO Faisal Toukan pinpointed three main drivers that wooed investors: the UAE’s rapidly expanding SME segment; product-led growth focus by Ziina; and a licence it just acquired from the central bank. The UAE is an SME-heavy market, with 560,000 small and medium enterprises constituting 60% of the country’s total GDP.
Product-Led Growth Strategy and Financial Ecosystem Expansion
The product has been leading its growth; for this reason, there hasn’t been a need for a sales team at Ziina, and 55% of its customers have been acquired organically. It solves pain points for SMEs: accessibility, cost transparency, and ease of use. SMEs can open accounts and set up payment processors in minutes, and Ziina offers straightforward pricing with no hidden fees.
The Central Bank licence further cements Ziina’s position, with the company able to offer more financial services. While this doesn’t cover lending, the licence allows Ziina to make revenue from the assets held on the platform. It also plans to launch its card product called ZiiCard and will expand into expense management.
Competing in a Growing Market
That said, despite fierce competition from other regional fintechs such as Paymob, Tabby, Telda, and Mamo, Ziina perceives a huge potential market throughout the MENA region. It projects its run-rate to reach 1.1 billion dirhams ($300 million) in annualised transaction volume, more than double the amount than last year.
Participants in Ziina’s Series A round include noted investors: Activant Capital, Avenir Growth, Fintech Collective, FJ Labs, Jabba Internet Group, Middle East Venture Partners, and Y Combinator. All in all, this brings Ziina’s total funding to over $30 million since its creation.
As Ziina continues to scale, it is onboarding its first sales hires to accelerate this growth, including top talent from Revolut. The company is keen to further cement the leading position in the UAE’s high-growth landscape of fintech with further expansions into consumer and business financial solutions.
