South African fintech raises R47M funding in Series A

TallOrder, the South African fintech developer of cloud-based point of sale (POS) solutions for the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market, has raised R47m ($3 085 761,18) in additional Series A funding which takes the total funds raised since late 2014, to a total of R80m. 

The funds were raised from existing investors, including Investec Private Capital, as well as a consortium led by Africa-focused fintech investment firm Nurture Investment Management. and will be used to accelerate growth and product development. Nurture’s consortium consists of family offices and high net worth individuals, including Valentine Chitalu, an experienced pan-African investor.

“Developing a robust, feature-rich and widely adaptable cloud POS solution takes a lot of development effort, both in terms of money and time. Investors have been keen to invest in the next generation of cloud-based point of sale systems, as the global market is vast and the growth opportunities massive” said Dana Buys, CEO and co-founder of TallOrder.

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Nurture’s co-founder and managing partner, Tatenda Mutizwa, commented: “We are pleased to make this significant investment into what we believe is a category-defining software-as-a-service company alongside Dana and the existing shareholders. We look forward to supporting the African — and ultimately global — expansion of TallOrder over the next few years.”

Buys notes that most US cloud POS providers are payment processors at the core, whilst TallOrder has taken a merchant centric approach, offering integration with popular payment platforms such as SnapScan, Zapper, MasterPass, Yoco, ThumbzUp, MTN MoMo, Innervation, African Resonance, NetCash, DPO and PayFast, to name but a few. 

Deployable on suitable Windows, iOS and Android-based devices, TallOrder has add-ons that include a fully integrated e-store for those who want to accept take-away orders and offer free deliveries, an interactive order management display system, flexible customer-facing displays with support for QR-Code payments and digital signage for dynamic in-store promotions.

“For the Sub-Saharan Africa market we had to build a cloud POS with solid offline capacity, as the continent’s internet tends to be slower, more expensive, and less reliable than that of developed countries, where the cloud access is fast, cheap and always-on. We have focused on building deep integrations to the popular SME local cloud accounting systems from Xero and Sage, as well as to local loyalty and reward systems,” says Buys.

In Africa, TallOrder can be deployed by retailers, service companies and hospitality businesses with the cloud-based solution ideal for SMEs who typically have less internet technology (IT) skills on board and do not have the time or resources needed to deal with the logistics of point-of-sale solutions. 

For the international market, TallOrder has developed a strong offering for the 10 -100 room hotel/lodge/resort/guest house market, by forging deep integrations to the leading cloud hospitality property management systems. Buys says that this large market is rapidly embracing the benefits of the cloud solutions on offer, as hospitality operations are restructured following the massive impact of the Covid 19 pandemic.

Read more: African fintech platform Finclusion Group secures $20 million in funding

Featured image: TallOrder