FOUNDER CONVERSATIONS WITH ZIROOPAY
Ziroopay, a Zrosk Venture Portfolio Company is changing the dynamics regarding POS payment and transactions.
Their USP is certainly a game changer for the African Economy, ‘POS transactions made without the internet connection’.
This is in addition to their mobile application, one that allows merchants to also track their sales and manage their business transactions effortlessly, using simple mobile devices.
Ziroopay is Co-Founded by Omoniyi Olawale, whose smooth transition from the Medical Field to the Fin-Tech Industry is without a doubt, laudable. In this exclusive interview, Omoniyi discloses details regarding Ziroopay as a brand and its founder’s journey from ideation to investments. Enjoy.
About the Co-Founder and CEO of Ziroopay.
Hi, my name is Omoniyi Olawale, I am the co-founder and CEO of Ziroopay, an integrated payment solution for small businesses across Africa. I trained as a medical Doctor in the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and proceeded to do my PostGraduate Studies in Finland.
It was while I was working in Finland that the idea for Ziroopay came to me, and it’s been an interesting journey since then. I believe very strongly that having one foot in each of these two societies, is an important part of how the idea for the business came about.
The big Idea Behind Ziroopay.
The idea for Ziroopay, came out of the frustration that we have felt personally as founders.
Anyone that has lived in Nigeria knows the frustration of trying to pay at the POS terminal with your card and the transaction gets declined because of poor internet connection, and many times you even get debited and you get lost into the rabbit hole of trying to recover your funds. So, the idea for us is simple.

Ziroopay helps small businesses get paid and grow; and what that means is that, we provide them with the only POS terminal that can process card payments in real time even when there is no internet connection.
Taking away the largest frustration for both the merchants and the customers.
We help them to track their sales, we help them to manage their business operations all from their mobile devices.
By doing this we help them, we give them time. We free up their time for them to be able to focus on what is most important, which is growing their business.
Over the three years that we’ve been operating in Nigeria, we’ve seen quite significant growth in the number of merchants and in the transaction volumes we are processing, and having a lot of feedback from merchants, to the effect that the value proposition is actually making a significant difference in their lives and that’s what makes us wake up every day.
The Eureka Moment for Ziroopay.
It was during the customer discovery interview that we got confirmation from actual merchants, thousands of merchants across Nigeria that we spoke with.
They confirmed our hypothesis that the major problems that they needed solved for them to maximize the potential of their business, namely: a way for them to increase sales, track the business and the performance of the business and a way for them to manage their operations in a simple and adaptable way; which was good for them now, but also grew along with them as their businesses grew and multiplied.
And those were exactly the things we set out to solve with Ziroopay.

So it was at that point that we knew that we were actually on to something that had the potential to unlock tremendous value, both for our customers and for the company itself.
It’s been confirmed by the kind of reception and enthusiasm that we’ve seen from our merchants, since we’ve been live in the market, across the several thousands of customers that we have all around Nigeria.
The feedback is consistently that, the product has changed how they do business and has helped them to be able to grow their businesses more efficiently than they did in the past. That reflects in the kind of transaction metrics that we see among our merchants, which is much better than the average transaction metrics that you see on a nation-wide scale.
It’s been what has driven the huge growth that we’ve experienced from organic word of mouth referrals from existing customers, that were just so happy with the product that they had; that they just had to tell everybody within their network of how this has made their lives and business much better and more efficient.
Choosing Partners and Teams.
We offer our products and payment services under the brand name of Ziroopay, and what does this name mean to our customers? It means that they can depend on the Ziroopay Payment solution to work every time that they need to process a payment from a customer.
And how that plays out in real life is that within the first one to two months of getting onboarded on our platform, we see that many of our merchants stop using other POS terminals and just focus on the one Ziroopay terminal, because they know that it’s not going to fail them.
This brand promise, around helping them get paid and grow, in a way that is reliable is especially the same way in which we look for and we decide on what team members to add to our team and what partners to work with and what service providers to work together with. So basically, in everyone that wants to work with us, we want to see if you share that same passion to help small businesses get paid and grow and to maximize their potential.

For every partner we work with, we ask ourselves, do they believe in the same things we believe in? Are they passionate about helping these small businesses and is there a way in which they can help us to better serve these customers.
Whether we work with them or not, depends on whether they can add value to the central mission.
The same to goes for whether we are trying to decide on who to hire to the team, what partner work with or what third-party service provide to leverage their services. It’s all about the customer. If you help us to help our customers get paid and grow, we are friends.
Revenue model, Scaling, Challenges and Investments.
Our primary revenue model is transactional, and what this means is that we charge a certain percentage of every transaction that we process for our customers, and this is in perfect alignment with our mission and our brand promise.
Our customers know that we are not just a hands-off service provider to them. We are partners with them in the journey of growing their businesses. So, it is only fitting that we only make money when they make money.
So, our fortunes are closely tied to those of our customers and that’s the reason why our customers know that we are partners with them, because the growth of the company and the future of the company is entirely dependent on how well we help our own customers to get paid, to grow and make their own businesses more profitable.
Haven sustained traction among the small businesses that are our primary target segment, achieved product market fit, we recently raised a ‘Series A’ round that was led by Zrosk Investment. The purpose of the funding round and the next 18-24 months, is basically around growing and scaling the different aspects of the business and the services that we provide to our customers. The mission remains the same, we want to help small businesses across Africa get paid and grow.

What that means is, we will continue to acquire more merchants and make it easier for them to grow their businesses, and everything that surrounds that; in terms of brand development, in terms of marketing, in terms of growing partnerships both with other Fin-Techs, with Banks and with other players in the system.
It also means from a product perspective that we continue to improve the product, so that it remains the kind of platform that solves the problems that our customers need, increasing the payment options that they have, and generally just making the product more adaptable to the needs of the customers.
On a company level, it means we are growing rapidly and hiring across the different units in the company and of course that presents its own opportunities and challenges around identifying people who would add value to our mission and growing the team rapidly without necessarily disrupting the cohesion and the commitment to the central vision.
The interesting thing for us is that, we have a great set of investors that help us to navigate these particular times, and we are excited about what the future holds.
Future Projections and Expectations for Ziroopay.
It’s so exciting to think about the future and what that means for Ziroopay and the small businesses that we help every day.

When I look 5 years into the future, I see a million small businesses across the 54 countries of Africa, across the various sectors of the economy in their local countries and across different stages of growth and different sizes of business operations. I see them depending on us everyday to help them get paid and grow.
The mission is always the same, helping these small businesses get paid and grow.
I see that when an entrepreneur in Lagos Nigeria wants to start a restaurant, or an entrepreneur in Horary wants to open a boutique shop or an entrepreneur in Ghana wants to open up a bar or a restaurant, Ziroopay is the first name that comes to their mind, as the payment partner that will help get paid, help them grow and help them, to fulfill their life ambition which led them on their entrepreneurial journey.
This is what we work towards every day, this is what excites us every day, this is what makes us excited to get out of bed and get to work; helping these businesses get paid and grow.
For more about Ziroopay, explore their website by visiting: https://ziroopay.com/