Can Flex Finance pull off an Expensya for Africa?

Tighter funding cycles for startups are forcing them to be prudent, so creating possibilities for solutions that market internal fiscal discipline by way of paying administration software. There is a major industry for whoever can pull this off.

It’s not a trouble that is special to startups. Numerous African enterprises however system internal reimbursement for team or seller payments manually. For firms that have regimented procurement procedures and upstarts wherever procurement is a lot more fluid, handling small business investing is an extra value layer in both time losses or losses from handbook faults. For finance departments, these payment requests can be challenging to continue to keep monitor of. 

The Entire world Lender says company payment transactions by micro-retailers alone in Africa can reach $1.5 trillion yearly. This amount of money compares favourably with how considerably African homes shell out on intake. In 2021 remaining family use expenditure in Africa sat at around 1.93 trillion (Statista). It is a big difference of very little extra than $400 billion—not a compact figure, to be sure. But only 22.2% larger than what firms purportedly invest in a 12 months.

The script flips if you get McKinsey figures for whole small business and buyer spending. As early as 2015, full business enterprise shelling out in Africa currently surpassed shopper expending. In accordance to McKinsey, organizations in Africa put in $2.6 trillion although people expended $2.1 trillion. The company investing was greatly concentrated in Nigeria and South Africa, McKinsey consultants reported. Variances in quantities apart, firms in Africa evidently devote hundreds of billions each individual 12 months and do regulate to do these substantial payments with primarily guide approval processes. Brookings, the think-tank, says these trillions of organization investing will only go up—to $4.2 trillion by 2030, 7 years absent.

Irrespective of this important organization spending, fintechs have historically concentrated on digitising client payments. Client payment fintechs have lifted hundreds of millions of pounds each 12 months since 2019 at the very least, to digitise how men and women pay back for goods or expert services. B2B-targeted fintechs on the other hand, are a fairly new phenomenon.

That may be shifting. DAI Magister, a London-centered financial commitment advisory says investor concentrate is going from client payment fintechs to “B2B payment remedies incorporating the CFO tech stack.” By now some fintech corporations have sprung up all around digitising B2B payments, with a recognizable focus on digitising how distributors accumulate or make payments to other businesses.

Flex Finance stands out from this B2B payments team as it is instead designed all around giving the operations and finance departments of enterprises sleek but tighter command about how they devote revenue. The corporation has crafted a suite of applications available by using world wide web browsers or cellular apps that make it possible for finance controllers to pre-approve paying restrictions and speed up vendor payment and reconciliation. Flex Finance believes its software can conserve small business consumers around 40% of additional charges and losses from the manual processing of payments.

The present-day venture funding crunch is a tailwind

Preserving revenue is a valid value proposition. As funding gets more durable to occur by, startups are now a lot more mindful of every single dollar used. With new investors more difficult to persuade and recent buyers demanding accountability, upstarts can hardly pay for to commit very important small business money carelessly. Each little little bit counts.

But Flex Finance does not only serve startups. Its roll phone of customers—a 2,500-solid-list—includes midsized firms like Ntel, an world wide web provider, the Countrywide Open University of Nigeria, and Sporting Lagos, a soccer club owned by Shola Akinlade of Paystack fame.

What Flex Finance does not cater to is micro-businesses. Nigeria’s various dozen million MSMEs procedure millions of microtransactions each day, but they are extra hard and high priced to provide. Given their informal nature, they are understandably not a in shape for Flex Finance which targets the handbook back offices of extra formalised enterprises.

Part of Flex Finance’s supplying to customers includes digital and bodily corporate cards with pre-authorised spending limits for small business employees. Spending limitations imply finance departments can system improved and diminish the shock of unforeseen invoices though tying expenses to easily trackable pursuits and employees.

It prices a .1% payment on all transactions less than ₦200 million. Costs for transactions earlier mentioned ₦200 million (roughly $252,000) are negotiated on a circumstance-by-circumstance foundation. 

Expensya, a equivalent invest management resolution founded by Tunisians, is a main supplier of computer software for European accounting places of work. It was a short while ago obtained by Medius, another foremost enterprise expending management supplier based mostly in Stockholm, Sweden. In Africa wherever Expensya’s founders hail from, no organization but owns the commit management area, building the room large open up for options like Flex Finance. 

For now, Flex Finance is only accessible in Nigeria. But there is an opportunity for it to aid uncover the company invest administration possibility across the continent. Globally, the company spend administration software market measurement was valued at $19.07 billion in 2022, according to Fortune Organization Insights. Figures for Africa are difficult to come by, which is easy to understand specified the little awareness that has been compensated to the space.

Publicly available data from Crunchbase implies Flex Finance has lifted at the very least $800,000 due to the fact its founding in 2019. This involves $200,000 of undiluted funding from Accion Enterprise Lab, The MasterCard Basis, and Catalyst Fund. Other traders include things like LoftyInc Cash Administration, Berrywood Money, and Gumroad CEO, Sahil Lavingia.

Yemi Olulana, the founder and CEO of Flex Finance suggests his organization is not in a hurry to raise additional cash.

Monitoring anything

In the years main up to 2020, Strava, a physical activity monitoring app, rocketed into reputation on the again of an interoperable software that customers described as “uncluttered” and designed “for adults”. Involving January 2020 and May well 2020, the application grew by 179% leaping into the public consciousness and out of The usa into the devices of 100 million consumers in 195 countries by 2022. 

Strava’s recognition and growth have hinged on the clarity and depth of assessment that it gives buyers, and a robust social network of amateurs, professional athletes and the each day person who likes to display off athletic activity.

Like Strava, Flex Finance appears to be betting that it can offer you superior analytics and visibility into enterprise paying. The thought is that this will assist funds supervisors make superior decisions on how to allocate money. Olulana suggests his organization has previously assisted some of its consumers renegotiate vendor payments just after exploring that they had been overpaying relative to current market selling prices. Regardless of whether this—and pre-loaded debit cards—will be plenty of to increase and gain the hearts of finance teams throughout Africa is what we hope to see Olulana’s staff pull off.

Unlike Strave and probable in no way, Flex Finance does not have a social layer—at least not but. A social community for finance nerds will be at minimum additional boring than Meta’s Twitter substitution. But word-of-mouth from satisfied accounting officers and CFOs can have a robust social impact on development. As I claimed before, there is food items on the desk for whoever can pull this off.


Corrected paragraphs 11 and 17 to replicate that Flex Finance offers actual physical cards not just digital cards.

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