African fintech Enza has raised $6.75 million in seed funding co-led by Algebra Ventures and Quona Capital, and partnered by Dubai-based Network International. The new capital will go toward expanding the team and rolling out new products for its banking clientele across Africa.

Founded in 2022 by Hany Fekry, a former managing director at Network, along with another ex-Network executive Hamish Houston, the digital payment firm has been building infrastructure for banks and fintechs while offering a range of local payment solutions such as cards, wallets, and real-time payments. 

“The Enza leadership team has an impressive track record of starting, growing, and exiting fintech businesses across the continent,” said Tarek Assaad, managing partner at Algebra Ventures, on why his firm backed the fintech.

As payments are mostly the first entry point into formal finance for the millions of unbanked small businesses across Africa, Enza wants to help these businesses accept in-person and online payments at little cost. 

With this strategy, the company wants to allow banks and fintechs to build long-term relationships which also plays to the changing dynamics between banks and fintechs in Africa. Enza’s infrastructure enables cross-selling of lending, savings, insurance, and other financial services. 

“Payments are the gateway. But the value is in the data and the services you can layer on top,” said Andrew Key, who joined Enza as an executive director in 2024. 

For a while, banks have preferably directed infrastructure and particularly SME market share to digital payment operators like Flutterwave, Fawry, Paymob, and Moniepoint – now Nigeria’s largest merchant acquirer. However, banks still hold the core head in providing broader service offerings and regulatory banking. 

“Banks have realized they gave up too much ground to fintechs. We want to give them the tech to compete and win it back,” Houston said.

Amid the increase in fintechs across Africa, banks have remained the central and regulated players behind most payment aggregators. However, many still lack clear visibility into what their aggregator partners are implementing. 

Meanwhile, Enza’s founders see this as a gap. They are rising to give banks more transparency and control over their payment ecosystems so they can stay compliant while scaling.

The Dubai-based startup broadens the payment options available to African banks by integrating with local card schemes like Verve, AfriGo, and Meeza, alongside global networks like Visa and Mastercard. 

Enza connects with real-time payment infrastructure such as Nigeria’s NIBSS, South Africa’s PayShap, and Egypt’s InstaPay. Its services extend to mobile money and telco wallets by supporting QR codes, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL), and contactless payment features.

Learning transfer

Before its official launch in January 2023, Fekry and Houston managed global acceptance, processing, and consumer finance departments at Network International. While Network primarily focused on a robust payments network across the Middle East and Africa, Enza founders felt a gap in creating comprehensive solutions for banks and fintechs, especially in Africa.

Both resigned to delve into fintech after they couldn’t find an interesting alignment with Network.

“Our divergence prompted us to take a step back and rethink how to address these underserved needs in the market,” CEO Fekry said in a conversation with TechCrunch. 

Fekry and Houston explained that they’ve built the company with a transfer of experience from their time at Network International and its subsidiary, DPO Group. They extend Enza to focus on a broader approach, serving card acceptance and merchant acquisition.

“We founded Enza to solve real infrastructure problems across Africa. We’ve spent our careers trying to make sure our families and communities can access financial products as people in Europe or the U.S. at a low cost and anytime they want,” Fekry said.

Fekry previously served as chief commercial officer at Emerging Markets Payments (EMP), which was acquired by Network International, where he later became a managing director.

Enza’s platform is designed for banks and fintechs on the issuing side, and SMEs and merchants on the acceptance side. The startup is initially targeting Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, three of the continent’s largest financial markets.

Enza’s performance

The fintech is banking on its founders’ decades of experience and deep relationships across the continent to quickly secure contracts with several banks. 

Across space, the firm has partnered with close to 200 banks with more future emphasis on quality over quantity. “We’re not trying to replicate that scale. We’re targeting 30 to 40 high-quality bank relationships,” Houston said. 

On an outlook, the Dubai-based fintech has already secured over 10 million monthly contracted transactions through live bank partnerships across six African markets, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Uganda, and South Africa. It also secured partnerships with Visa, EBC, Terrapay, and Compress Plus Technologies. 

Enza charges banks on a per-transaction (“per-click”) basis. Those volumes are growing 35 to 40 per cent month-over-month and are expected to double in the next two years.

In its early years, the founders funded the company themselves. When they decided to raise outside capital, the founders said they didn’t explore the deal widely.