Ghana’s appsNmobile raises $1m to scale its virtual POS payments solution for businesses

Ghanaian fintech startup, appsNmobile has closed a $1 million investment from the Oasis Capital VC fund to scale its e-payments service for businesses in Ghana.

Managed by Oasis Capital, the Oasis Africa VC fund is a $50 million fund invested into early-stage startups in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Oasis Capital is backed by local Ghanaian financiers as well as global investors including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Investment Bank and the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF).

Founded in 2015 by Richard Bansah, appsNmobile provides custom mobile payments services to help micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) digitise the entire collection process.

With its new fundraise, appsNmobile plans to grow its mobile-based virtual point of sale (vPOS) flagship product, a USSD-enabled application that allows SMEs receive payments from customers.

Each merchant who registers on the platform is assigned a unique ussd short code extension to facilitate transactions. The startup is especially catering to micro and small businesses which may not be able to afford PoS devices.

The startup’s USSD-enabled payments app combines specific dynamic menus which notify merchants of completed transactions and grants access to a portal where they can view their entire payments history.

Apart from MSMEs, banks employ the startup’s vPOS solution by offering it to customers who only use feature phones, thus ensuring that they can easily make direct deposits into their bank accounts.

According to CEO Richard Bansah, a portion of the latest financing will also be used to fulfil the Bank of Ghana’s licence capital requirement. The BoG, last year, pegged the minimum capital requirements for payments service providers at ₵2 million ($346,000).

Moreover, appsNmobile operates an agropayments platform called Agropay. Agropay helps farmers receive payments from agribusinesses and encourages organised purchase of farm produce or items. Farmers are able to see the exact payments made for each product sold out and monitor any irregularities in transactions.

The startup does not categorically state the number of businesses its vPOS solution currently serves in Ghana but says it wants to establish itself as a prominent player in the country’s payments market.