The funding round, which included participation from Visa and existing investors, such as Y Combinator and Saviu Ventures, brings Workpay’s total raised to nearly $10 million since its launch in 2019. 

The involvement of Visa, following its fintech accelerator program, points to the prospects seen in Workpay’s growth and future direction.

Founded by Paul Kimani and Jackson Kungu, Workpay initially focused on payroll services but has grown into a comprehensive HR platform designed to meet the complex needs of businesses across Africa. 

The platform offers simplified solutions for managing HR and payroll functions, which remains a huge challenge for many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the continent.

Workpay addresses these challenges by providing an affordable, user-friendly cloud-based solution that makes HR and payroll management seamless, enabling its accessibility even to businesses that traditionally rely on Excel and Google Sheets due to the prohibitive costs of more complex systems. 

The platform supports local businesses with 20-100 employees operating within a single country, as well as larger companies with up to 1,000 employees spread across multiple African countries.

The recent funding will be used to expand Workpay’s financial services offerings, enhance its performance management tools with artificial intelligence, and grow its workforce. 

Also, Workpay aims to solidify its presence across Africa, having already added nearly 500 businesses to its platform in the past 16 months, serving more than 1,000 customers in 20 African countries. 

Despite delays in its expansion into Francophone Africa, the company has seen its revenue grow by 1.5 times in the first half of 2024 and is on track to double by the end of the year.

Kimani, Workpay’s co-founder, says the company remains well-placed despite the increasing global competition. 

He noted that the diverse regulatory sector across African countries puts forward a unique challenge for international players, but believes that Workpay’s deep understanding of the local market gives it a competitive edge, allowing the company to continue scaling rapidly while addressing the growing needs of African businesses.

Having raised an initial $2.1 million in seed funding, 2020, the current pre-Series A round boosts the total funding amount raised by Workpay. Investors in the current round were Launch Africa, Saviu Ventures, Acadian Ventures, Proparco, Fondation Botnar, Kara Ventures, Axian, P1 Ventures, and Norrsken. 

The YC-backed startup, W20 batch, was founded by the CEO, Paul Kimani and COO, Jackson Kungu. It plans to launch a payroll engine to serve customers in more markets, while it ensures efficient service provision and will release an API to enable firms such as accounting companies become payroll providers.

Workpay is a full-stack HR Payroll company that helps employees to manage and pay workers. The HR company offers tools that enable these clients pay salaries in local currencies across and outside Africa through partners, provides file taxes, and processes employee benefits. The tools also help employers track and manage employees’ time and attendance, as well as leave days.

The startup looks to include financial services in its offerings as it adds linkages to investment accounts, medical and asset insurance, and earned-wage access for employees attending to emergencies or bills.

Workpay affirms to experience a tremendous user base increase with revenue doubling annually, and has about $200 million in total payroll value being handled for customers every year.