MoneyHash, an Egyptian FinTech startup and Africa’s first Super-API for payment orchestration and revenue operations, emerged from beta to launch its platform across MEA. The startup also raised $3 million in pre-seed funding. MoneyHash empowers businesses in emerging markets to streamline their payment stack and optimize pay-in/pay-out operations without breaking the bank with the goal to become the AWS of payments.

With one connection point, MoneyHash users can connect with services across the revenue stack, from pay-in/pay-out providers across MEA to value-added service providers such as KYC, fraud detection, and loyalty programs.

“Early-stage companies often start with one or two providers for payment processing and payout. But as they grow, they have to tack on provider after provider to meet their growing needs. Each expansion can take an in-house tech team 3-10 weeks, not to mention the ongoing demands of reporting reconciliation, operational inefficiencies, and technical vulnerabilities. And that’s a challenge we are passionate to solve,” Mustafa Eid, co-founder and CTO at MoneyHash said.

The company has been in beta since early 2021, with 17 companies using their sandbox environment to test integration and tools. The team has conducted extensive user research with over 150 companies, engaged multiple providers across the region, and built a comprehensive suite of tools.

“It all started late 2020. I spent some time talking with multiple companies about what kind of problems they face with payments and I realized that when big companies whether in the region or outside of the region try to deal with emerging markets, they have massive fragmentation whether in that payment methods or the currencies or the different economies and regulation and they do a lot of effort incrementally in each market to plug into the payment system there and this is purely a technical issue on the side of API integration or API development,” Nader Abdelrazik, co-founder and CEO, told Waya.

MoneyHash will use the funds to grow its team and extend the capabilities of the Super-API to serve businesses across MEA with a simple, comprehensive payment solution

The pre-seed round has an impressive ensemble of investors led by UAE’s venture capital firm COTU Ventures, and the participation of MENA fintech fund VentureSouq and European fund VentureFriends. Other participating funds include Nuwa Capital, The Continent Venture Partners, First Check Africa, Fox Ventures, Kepple Africa Ventures and Lofty Capital Inc.

A global group of angel investors also participated in the round, including NerdWallet’s Tim Chen and Jake Gibson, Belvo’s Oriol Tintore, and regional operators such as Jad Antoun (Huspy), Feras Jalbout (Baraka), and Hussein Elkheshen (Sakneen).

“When I first heard of MoneyHash, I was very excited by the idea. I saw huge potential in having an aggregator for all different payment gateways, which would both reduce engineering time and increase visibility on transactions. Sakneen saw these benefits firsthand when we enrolled in the MoneyHash private beta, and I believe that their tools will continue to help us scale and expand in the future. I am excited for what the future holds, both as a customer and as an angel investor.” says Hussein Elkheshen, CTO of Sakneen.

In addition to the Super-API, MoneyHash offers customizable services for a variety of businesses: a unified checkout experience for e-commerce, centralized reporting for business intelligence, and micro-services such as transaction routing, subscription management, and invoicing.

“I think FinTech in the region will keep growing and keep growing and we still need more actually. The region has a big mass in terms of population, in terms of markets, in terms of needs. There are still a lot of markets and a lot of sub sectors that need to be covered. So there is room for a lot more FinTech solutions to come,” Abdelrazik told Waya.

With MoneyHash, companies can quickly and easily build a payment stack that fits their unique needs.

“The financial technology sector, and digital payments in particular, is a foundational piece of the infrastructure on which the digital economy in the region is being built. MoneyHash is building an important framework to accelerate the development and growth potential of SMBs and enterprises in the region by automating their access to digital payment methods and adjacent services,” Joshua Kaplan, partner at Wilson Sonsini and member of MoneyHash’s advisory board, stated.