Nuwa Capital announced its latest investment in Saudi Arabia, through its participation in a $1.6M (SAR 6M) pre-seed round of Saudi-based fintech company EdfaPay. The round was co-led by Wallan Investment Group and InspireUs. The company has built a softPOS system, which allows any merchant to accept payments using their smartphones as opposed to a traditional POS system. This essentially transforms every NFC smartphone into a payment terminal. EdfaPay is launching on the heels of a wider transition towards software-based POS systems, which Nuwa Capital believe will witness a growth rate similar to software-based payment systems (such as Google Pay and Apple Pay).
The company was founded by Ghormallah AlGhamdi, Nedal Sabahi Nedal and Veysel Baydogan, who collectively bring over 50 years of regional and global experience to tackling this problem. EdfaPay’s softPOS solution allows merchants to reduce the capital costs and technical hurdles associated when setting up their payment solutions. It also allows them to expand their reach in accepting card payments in locations where legacy solutions cannot be deployed, such as in direct sales, small stores, food delivery agents, sales agents, bazar shacks, and much more. “Improving digital payment accessibility is key to unlocking scale in many businesses, the company is spearheaded by three founders that we have deep belief in. EdfaPay is going after the opportunity to cut cost and avoid technical hurdles for small-scale business and smoothly plug into digitized payments” said Kholoud Almohammadi, Venture Partner at Nuwa Capital.
The company has also developed a suite of tools to help merchants access additional data post-payment. For example, merchants can now access transactional and historical data via a dashboard, which also allows them to manage user access across branches and stores. “The Saudi market is at an inflection point when it comes to financial services. While there is a tangible move towards digitizing payments, merchants are still faced with a lot of friction and costs incurred by setting up payment solutions. We are tapping into an opportunity that has remained largely underserved, while allowing our customers to focus on what they do best,” said Ghormallah Alghamdi, CEO at EdfaPay. “EdfaPay essentially allows merchants to offload the burden of managing payments at scale. The suite of tools the team has built empowers merchants to expand their business as well as leverage data through multiple touchpoints,“ said Yaser Alghamdi, investor in EdfaPay
