Driven by a passion to make a mark in Africa’s payment systems, Ifedayo Osun, a Biomedical Engineering graduate from the University of Ilorin identified an opportunity to bridge a gap and boost Africa’s digital economy. This vision led to the creation of Velvpay, a digital payment solution designed to empower micro-scale businesses in Africa.
By Eberechi Obinagwam
Driven by a passion to make a mark in Africa’s payment systems, Ifedayo Osun, a Biomedical Engineering graduate from the University of Ilorin identified an opportunity to bridge a gap and boost Africa’s digital economy. This vision led to the creation of Velvpay, a digital payment solution designed to empower micro-scale businesses in Africa.
As the founder of Velvpay, Ifedayo provides affordable, flexible, and immediate payment options without the need for expensive integrations.
Birth of Velvpay platform
The founder of Velvpay started operations in February 2024, focusing on serving African micro-scale businesses with a mission to reduce cash dependency by 60% by 2030. “We have made significant progress since our launch,” he said.
According to the young techie, what inspired him was the glaring inefficiency in Africa’s payment systems, where 90% of transactions are still cash-based. “With Micro-scale businesses struggling with high transaction fees, lack of access to digital payment tools that works, and slow adoption of digital payments, I saw an opportunity to bridge this gap and contribute to the growth of Africa’s digital economy by creating a platform that simplifies payments for these businesses.”
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Sourcing for capital
Ifedayo recognized that sourcing for capital was challenging when he started because many investors were hesitant to back a start-up focused on payment for micro-scale businesses, which is seen as high-risk.
He, however, found a way to get the needed capital. “While there seem to be major players in this market, there is still no clear winner. However, I am lucky to be surrounded by amazing friends, mentors, and family who are willing to pool their resources to help us overcome this.”
Penetrating the market
Ifedayo’s major challenge was customer skepticism. He was able to address it by bringing in businesses to their immediate network. “Our major challenge was customer skepticism and how we addressed this was to first bring in businesses in our immediate network, take their feedback and improve our system to make life easy for them, once we got them to see the value in what we do, we asked them to help us create video testimonials to be available online so that new vendors that we speak to can also find it easy to partner with us. We also invest in a lot of community reach outs and events where we can establish personal connection with owners of these businesses. This strategy was refined and used in 2024 and been our major source of growth,” he said.
Unforgettable experience
An unforgettable experience to Ifedayo was when his business revenue grew to cover all their expenses. “This was a needed validation for us on how sustainable our business approach is,” he said. The founder of Velvpay said one breakthrough that was encouraging for him was a testimonial from a customer on how their product is helping her with insight into her business.
“One breakthrough that was encouraging for me was during our interactions, one of our customers told us about how our solution helps her properly manage her business giving her insight into her business and how her customers transact. “
Challenges
He said a peculiar challenge for him is customer education because many micro-scale businesses are still unfamiliar with digital payment systems. ”The operational efficiency it gives their business and the growth potential this operational efficiency affords them, is because we invest heavily in educating them.”
Japa
Ifedayo said while leaving Nigeria is always an option; the country’s growing population and increasing mobile penetration present unique opportunities to build sustainable businesses by addressing resultant vast challenges. These factors he said, create fertile grounds for innovative solutions that can scale quickly and generate significant impact and revenue.
Background
Ifedayo Osun is a self-taught software engineer with over eight years of experience in fintech, virtual reality, and blockchain. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Ilorin. He was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria.
His passion for solving Africa’s unique challenges led to the creation of Velvpay. He said before this, he was the CTO of a crypto start-up that allows Africans use their crypto assets for daily transactions like airtime purchases, internet subscription among others.
“We also launched the first fully automated on-ramp and off-ramp peer-to-peer system and I built a VR streaming solution. I’m deeply committed to using technology to drive financial inclusion and economic growth in Africa,” he said.
