In June 2021, Ziina, recent from finishing YC’s first cohort that 12 months and securing a $7.5 million seed, launched its fintech app to twenty,000 retail clients, permitting them to ship and obtain cash.
Three years later, the Dubai-based startup, which now counts 50,000 retail and enterprise clients after increasing its choices to satisfy the wants of micro, small, and medium-sized companies within the UAE, has netted $22 million in Collection A funding led by Altos Ventures.
Certainly, such sizable follow-on funding regardless of the worldwide funding slowdown underscores buyers’ confidence within the fintech firm’s progress — the corporate claims 34% month-over-month progress in clients for the final 12 months, and says its revenues have elevated ten-fold over the identical interval.
Co-founder and CEO Faisal Toukan advised TechCrunch that three components made Ziina notably thrilling to buyers. They embody the quickly increasing SME section within the UAE, its concentrate on product-led progress, and its lately acquired central financial institution license.
Increasing SME section
Ziina originated as a peer-to-peer (P2P) fee app for splitting payments, corresponding to for group journeys or hire. Whereas the app gained traction with retail clients within the UAE, some who ran companies sought to make use of the digital pockets to ship and obtain funds, too, in keeping with Toukan.
In response, Ziina organically expanded its platform into two segments: Ziina Private for splitting payments amongst mates and Ziina Enterprise for gathering funds. The primary enterprise characteristic allowed customers to ship fee hyperlinks and receives a commission via Apple Pay, Google Pay, MasterCard and Visa.
As demand from companies elevated, Ziina developed extra merchandise for them: a fee gateway (checkout) built-in with platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify for on-line funds, point-of-sale (POS) options for in-person funds utilizing QR codes, and funds by way of social media. Along with these options, Ziina added CRM features so companies can monitor buyer particulars and interactions.
The YC-backed startup continues to supply its P2P service, but it surely’s clear why most of its product focus is now on small companies. The startup targets an underserved market of 560,000 SMEs within the UAE, which account for over 94% of all firms and contribute about 60% of the nation’s GDP. As of 2023, round 77% of SMEs within the UAE had adopted digital funds, fueling the rising demand for monetary administration instruments.
“We’re an all-in-one platform for companies to receives a commission within the UAE, having advanced from being purely a shopper app to an ecosystem that connects customers and companies for funds beneath one platform,” Toukan defined on the decision. “We take a look at the overall expertise as customers will pay companies, companies will pay customers, after which construct that community impact throughout the 2 buyer segments. And that is without doubt one of the key differentiators we’ve in our product technique and enterprise. So principally, every thing ought to be beneath one ecosystem the place individuals have a financially trusted associate.”
Product-led progress
From a product standpoint, Ziina says it addresses three vital ache factors for SMEs within the funds house: accessibility, price transparency, and consumer expertise.
Relating to accessibility, SMEs can use the fintech to open accounts and arrange a fee processor in minutes as a substitute of weeks.
When it comes to price, Ziina says it presents simple pricing with no hidden charges — 2.6% plus 1 AED (about US$ 0.25) for every fee hyperlink and POS transaction, and a couple of.9% plus 1 AED for every fee gateway transaction.
Lastly, clients have a dashboard to trace and reconcile on-line and offline funds and fee hyperlinks.
With Ziina’s speedy progress during the last 12 months, it now serves 50,000 lively customers, together with each retail and enterprise clients; its enterprise clients reduce throughout style and gaming to journey and tourism. Toukhan additionally tells TechCrunch that the startup now processes about 1,050 dirhams ($280) each 60 seconds and is on monitor to deal with 1.1 billion dirhams (~$300 million) in annualized transaction quantity, up from 550 million dirhams (~$150 million) final 12 months.
Ziina’s progress has come primarily via product-led efforts and not using a devoted gross sales crew. Based on the chief govt, 55% of its clients have come organically, whereas the remainder have come from B2B referrals.
Nonetheless, because it continues to scale and supply extra monetary companies off the again of the banking license it obtained, that’ll possible change. The corporate is onboarding its first gross sales hires, together with some from Revolut.
Ziina claims to be the primary venture-backed startup with the saved worth facility (SVF) license from the Central Financial institution of the UAE. This enables the fintech to supply extra monetary options – excluding lending, which requires a separate license – and earn income from the float when clients preserve property on the platform, for instance.
Toukan believes that this license and monetary ecosystem of merchandise (the fintech is venturing into expense administration quickly with the launch of its card product, ZiiCard) provides Ziina an edge over different regional fintechs that present overlapping monetary companies. Paymob, for example, supplies POS terminals; Tabby is rising its monetary choices exterior of purchase now, pay later; Telda presents P2P funds; and Mamo is within the spend administration enterprise.
Regardless of this competitors, the chief govt, who based the fintech with Sarah Toukan and Andrew Gold, sees ample market potential for Ziina within the quickly rising funds sector for customers and companies throughout the MENA area.
“The Center East appears to be rising fairly strongly, particularly relating to GDP progress. And the UAE is without doubt one of the pioneers in that,” the CEO remarked. “If we at Ziina do our jobs appropriately, which we’re fairly enthusiastic about, we should always be capable of have 200,000 month-to-month lively companies on the platform 4 years from now, given the rise of SMEs within the UAE. And when you take a look at gamers like Nubank in Brazil, they hit these targets of between 10 to twenty% market penetration. So we intend to do this and be the Nubank of the area.”
The Collection A spherical additionally included participation from Activant Capital, Avenir Development, Fintech Collective, FJ Labs, Jabba Web Group, Center East Enterprise Companions, and Y Combinator. This brings Ziina’s complete enterprise raised to over $30 million since its inception in 2020.