UAE’s payment app Ziina raises $7.5m in new funding

Company will use the money to launch its wallet service, expand into Saudi Arabia and hire new talent

Left to right, Ashiq Korikkar, head of growth; Faisal Toukan, co-founder and chief executive; and Andrew Gold, co-founder and head of engineering, are the brains behind peer-to-peer payments app Ziina. Antonie Robertson / The NationalShow less

A Dubai-based peer-to-peer (P2P) payment application that lets users split bills with friends raised $7.5 million through an early-stage funding round.

Ziina secured seed funding from a group of investors led by US-based Avenir Growth Capital and Class 5 Global, with participation from investors including Wamda Capital, FJ Labs, Graph Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Jabbar Internet Group and Jasoor Ventures, the venture capital arm of Oman Technology Fund.

The funding round, which closed last month, will help the company launch its wallet service and fuel its expansion into Saudi Arabia, it said in a statement on Monday. It will also look to hire new talent.

We will also use this financing to continue to attract top global talent to further elevate Ziina's product and bring the application to the centre of our users' daily finances

The latest funding round will "support the launch of our highly-anticipated wallet feature, which we will be introducing along with our new banking partner shortly”, Faisal Toukan, chief executive and co-founder of Ziina, said.

“We will also use this financing to continue to attract top global talent to further elevate Ziina’s product and bring the application to the centre of our users’ daily finances.”

P2P payment technology allows customers to transfer funds from their bank account or credit card to others through the internet and is booming globally.

The market was valued at $1.8 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $4.5bn by 2027, growing 11.8 per cent annually, according to Statistics Market Research Consulting.

The funding round also included Zinal Growth, the investment fund of Guillaume Pousaz, chief executive of payment solutions provider Checkout.com; Krishnan Menon, chief executive of financial management app Bukukas; Marc Atiyeh, chief executive of Pawp; as well as executives from Paypal and Venmo.

Ziina has now raised more than $8.6m in capital in just over a year, the company said. It raised an undisclosed amount in an earlier seed funding round in January this year.

The company’s new partners have invested in FinTechs around the world. Avenir’s latest funding deals have included US digital bank Current and Africa’s largest FinTech, Flutterwave.

Meanwhile, Goodwater Capital are key investors in Toss, Korea’s largest digital wallet. FJ Lab’s previous investments include Chinese financial services company Ant Financial, while Graph Ventures’ investments include zero-commission trading app Robinhood and robo-adviser Wealthfront.

In January, Ziina, which was founded last year, was accepted into Silicon Valley-based start-up accelerator Y-Combinator’s programme.

Y-Combinator has helped launch more than 2,000 companies, including Airbnb, Stripe and Dropbox.

Ziina said there are already more than 20,000 verified users on the waiting list for its wallet application. The company, which lets users send and receive payments with just a phone number, also plans to expand into Jordan by 2022.