Payments platform provider Nomanini has achieved 1 500% growth in transactions over 20 months as the company successfully scales its mobile point-of-sale (PoS) platform for informal markets.
Founded in 2010, Nomanini has designed a payments platform, which provides merchant aggregators with sophisticated business insights via a cloud-based platform, and merchants and micro-entrepreneurs in informal markets with the means to sell different types of services electronically and create a sustainable income.
Having hit 1-million transactions in August 2014, the company has seen growth of 1 500% since then, and recently saw the 16-millionth transaction take place on its platform.
Much of this growth has been focused on Mozambique, Ghana and South Africa, and has been achieved against a backdrop of 99,99% uptime.
Nomanini’s CEO, Vahid Monadjem, says the explosive growth is a validation of the company’s business model and its ability to provide a valuable, relevant and efficient product at scale.
“This kind of growth is the result of our partnership model and the way in which we enter new markets by ensuring we have expert local partners on the ground. Much of this growth is focused on two or three partners, and it has proven that we can deliver a scalable platform by combining world-class technology with local expertise,” says Monadjem.
“To have achieved such growth with almost 100% uptime also demonstrates the maturity of the product and the infrastructure around it. Reaching such a landmark number of transactions would mean nothing if there were periods when merchants were unable to use the platform and the fact that it is available to them all the time means it is a product they can trust.”
Nomanini has not been resting on its laurels in spite of its growth. At the end of last year the company launched its second generation product for informal markets – eLula – providing enterprise prepaid distributors with more sophisticated business insights as well as management tools.
Earlier this year, the company announced it had integrated with M-Pesa in Mozambique, enabled via its local country partner, Mozambique Mobile Solutions (MMS), to allow merchants to use mobile money agents to top up their virtual vending accounts on Nomanini’s PoS terminals.
Monadjem says that continuing to hone the product was vital as Nomanini looks to serve merchants in informal markets. “As we deploy more and more terminals, merchants are referring them to other merchants. It is becoming less about training people to use something new, and more about showing them something they have already heard good things about.
“There’s a latent demand for this kind of technology and this kind of service. People want this and are ready to take it up. But you need the right partners, the right people, and the right value proposition.”
