Nearpays: Building Payment Infrastructure for Africa's Small Businesses

Across much of Africa, a small shop owner who wants to accept a card payment still needs dedicated hardware, a bank relationship and a reliable connection. Many don't have all three, so they stay cash-only.

Nearpays removes the hardware. Its SoftPOS product turns an ordinary smartphone into a payment terminal, and the platform adds AI-powered tax compliance, offline payments and a dashboard for larger businesses.

We're investors in Nearpays, and this has been the company's strongest quarter yet.

By the numbers

• 150K+ paying users
• $52K in monthly recurring revenue (about $650K annualized)
• Near break-even
• A team of 30

A quarter of firsts

Nearpays became the first African startup to win the AI for Good Award, and weeks later the first African startup to win the Money20/20 Middle East Pitch Competition. Both are global stages, and both put a payments company from the continent in front of the institutions that shape the industry.

Partnerships that matter

Awards bring attention. Partnerships bring distribution. This quarter Nearpays partnered with GTBank Rwanda and Fidelity Bank Ghana, both now using its SDK, and with Visa to scale SoftPOS across Africa. It also expanded into Rwanda.

For a payments company, bank partners are the difference between selling one merchant at a time and reaching thousands through institutions that already serve them.

Why we're excited

Africa has the youngest population in the world, and much of its commerce still runs on cash. As smartphones keep spreading, the cheapest way to bring a merchant online is to use the device they already own. Nearpays is built around that idea, and the combination of bank partnerships and near break-even economics gives it room to scale.

What we're watching

How quickly new bank partners turn into merchant growth, how the company expands beyond its current markets, and whether it can stay close to break-even while it scales.

From the founder

"It has been an amazing experience with LvlUp Ventures, from gaining great exposure and building valuable partnerships to accessing educational opportunities that equip us with the knowledge and insights needed to scale." Victor Daniyan, Nearpays

Figures are founder-reported, from Nearpays' October 2026 Quarterly Founder Update, and shared with the company's permission.