How Kenya’s InstaSend helps you build secure, scalable fintech products faster

by James · November 14, 2022

Kenya’s IntaSend provides payment infrastructure for startups, enterprises and developers to build secure and scalable fintech products faster.

Founded by Felix Cheruiyot and Moses Korir in September 2019, IntaSend enables startups and developers to create fintech products and go live in days, at a fraction of the cost. The startup enables developers to create fintech products that can collect, disburse and hold funds with just a few lines of code.

“Initially, we worked as consultants, and we always had challenges with receiving payments from international customers. While researching, we found that many freelancers faced similar challenges when trying to collect payments online. This led us to create a solution that made it easier for freelancers to collect payments online,” Korir told Disrupt Africa.

IntaSend has combined payment collections through card and mobile money, payments to mobile money and banks, and digital wallet services into a single API, which eliminates the challenges of lack of interoperability between payment systems. When businesses, startups and freelancers register with IntaSend, they can accept mobile money and card payments online, and disburse funds to M-Pesa and banks.

IntaSend also does not offer coding solutions such as payment links that enable freelancers to invoice their clients and collect payments.

“Initially, we started operations as a payment gateway, but when we talked to our customers and developers, they expressed the challenges they face when developing fintech products,” Korir said.

“The biggest challenge developers and startups face is the time it takes – about six months – to develop secure and scalable fintech applications. Developing these apps is also expensive, with costs ranging from US$50,000 to US$100,000 with most of the budget spent on digital wallet development, payments, security and compliance.

There has been considerable interest in the start-up solution.

“We currently serve over 1,000 businesses and freelancers. More than 40,000 digital wallets have been created on the IntaSend platform,” said Korir.

InstaSend, which has been a startup since its inception, is currently in the process of raising funds, and has plans to expand across sub-Saharan Africa.

“We charge a transaction fee for the funds we collect on behalf of our customers. We have already surpassed the total payments we processed in 2021, and we are on course this year to more than double the payments we processed in 2021, Korir said.