LAGOS,Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)-Nigeria’s API startup, Thepeer, which raised a $2.1 million seed round in June 2022, has announced its closure and plans to return remaining capital to investors due to failure to scale, according to a statement released on Monday.
The three-year-old startup announced its closure after acknowledging that its exceptional technology alone was not enough.
“Our unique service had its challenges, the first being compliance issues.
Additionally, the overall acceptance of wallets as a viable payment option didn’t grow as rapidly as we had hoped,” it said.
The company’s APIs were designed to facilitate easy money movement for fintechs and businesses, allowing them to embed various products into their applications and websites.
The goal was to connect wallets across more than 400 fintechs in Africa to facilitate payments.
Thepeer becomes the second startup in 2024 to return remaining capital to investors, following in the footsteps of Cova, a wealthtech startup. This underscores the challenges faced in building fintech businesses on the continent.
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Founded in April 2021 by Kosisochukwu Ononye and Michael “Trojan” Okoh, Thepeer aimed to provide infrastructure support primarily for fintech businesses, ranging from small to medium-sized enterprises.
It secured a pre-seed round of $220,000 from investors such as Ezra Olubi, co-founder of Paystack, and Prosper Otemuyiwa, CTO of Edenlife, according to Crunchbase records.
One year later, Thepeer secured a $2.1 million seed round with the Raba Partnership taking the lead. Additional investors in this round included RaliCap, Timon Capital, BYLD Ventures, Musha Ventures, Sunu, and Uncovered Fund.
In 2022, the startup claimed its monthly transaction volume had reached millions in dollars, with an average month-on-month (MoM) transaction growth of 161%.
The company also had plans to expand to other African countries, including Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt.
Thepeer has now admitted that despite all that growth; it failed to align its product with the market’s needs.
To refocus on core priorities, both founders have opted to place the product in maintenance mode for the time being.
“We’ll work to maintain the platform for as long as possible until we discover a new home for it,” the statement added.