region

Startups, Venture

Construction-Tech Startup BRKZ Emerges from Stealth in MENA with $8M in Funding

Saudi Arabia is poised to become one of the largest global construction hubs owing to its trillion-dollar infrastructure and the real estate projects that are underway in the country. BRKZ is today emerging from stealth backed by a $8 million Series A round co-led by Beco Capital and 9900 Capital. Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures, Knollwood Investment Advisory, RZM Investment and MISY Ventures also participated in the round. Following the fresh capital injection, the B2B marketplace aims to expand in Saudi Arabia and the MENA region to facilitate contractors in procuring materials and manufacturers in selling, with a focus on same or next-day delivery. He added that the startup can process commonly ordered building materials within minutes, but more time is required for “specialized materials”.

Max Chen
March 6, 2024

Fintech

MoneyHash secures $4.5M in funding for innovative payment orchestration platform benefiting MENA merchants

The payment landscape in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region is marked by significant fragmentation, with numerous payment providers and methods in each country, evolving regulations and diverse customer preferences. This complexity is further compounded by challenges such as payment fraud, low checkout conversion rates, and high transaction failure rates. Payment orchestration platforms streamline payment processes for merchants through unified payment APIs. As merchants or companies launch their platforms, they often start by collaborating with one or two payment processing providers. As their operations grow and expand into multiple regions, they onboard additional payment providers to meet their evolving needs.

Max Chen
February 27, 2024

Fintech, Startups

Prometeo Secures $13M Investment from PayPal, Samsung, and Other Leaders in Open Banking for Latin America

Prometeo, a startup out of Uruguay building channels to enable open banking across Latin America, is today announcing that it has picked up $13 million in funding to expand its business. A lot of open banking these days focused on national rollouts — not least because banking conventions and regulations are often very localized. (It’s not the only company that believes that open banking has a big role to play in financial services in the future: last year, the open banking startup Ivy raised funding specifically to expand to Latin America; and Christine wrote here extensively on Finerio, an ambitious open banking startup out of Mexico. More recently, last year it led a $14 million round into nocnoc, a Latin America cross-border commerce specialist. It also owns the point-of-sale payments company Zettle, which has been making very big inroads into Latin America for years now.