Nigerian fintech startup Hizo has closed a $100,000 friends-and-family seed financing round. The funding will help scale its platform designed to simplify seamless intra‑Africa money transfers in local currencies, benefiting traders, businesses, and individuals across the continent.
Hizo is addressing a critical gap in Africa’s payments landscape. Its platform enables users to send, receive, and spend local currencies directly across 14+ African countries, bypassing costly and inefficient foreign currency exchange routes that remain common in existing remittance systems.
CEO and co-founder Victor Chiedu emphasized:
“Intra-African payments are broken. Hizo is a platform built by Africans, for Africans — to make local currency transfers affordable, fast, and borderless.”
Hizo plans to allocate the $100K injection across key areas such as adding features and features improving infrastructure reliability and UX, accelerating acquisition across domestic and pilot markets, and strengthening the core team via strategic hires and training.
The seed round reflects Hizo’s preference for community-aligned investors who share its vision of sustainable, grassroots-driven innovation .
This early backing positions the startup to attract institutional funding as it gains momentum across Africa’s borderless commerce corridors.
Across Africa’s fragmented financial markets, small traders and cross-border communities often rely on expensive dollar-centric remittance corridors. Hizo’s native currency-first model reduces friction and cost for these everyday transactions, enabling truly Pan‑African commerce .
Its pilot system in Nigeria allows users to transact in Nigerian Naira across multiple countries, with plans to expand other currencies and corridors soon .
As Hizo gears up for expansion, the startup aims to integrate additional local currencies and partner with banks, mobile money operators, and remittance platforms to broaden cross-border connectivity. Its mission: empower individuals and SMEs to transact confidently across Africa without reliance on foreign currencies.
This seed milestone marks the beginning of what could be a transformative journey toward decentralized, currency-native commerce across the continent.
Nigeria remains a hotspot for fintech innovation, boasting numerous high-growth startups despite economic challenges in the domestic market. Companies like Hizo are emerging to solve foundational problems—enabling intra-African financial interoperability and unlocking economic value across borders.
About Hizo: Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Lagos, Hizo is a fintech startup focused on eliminating inefficiencies in intra-African money movement by pioneering local-currency-first cross-border transactions.
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