Why We Invested in Scale: Pan-African Card-as-a-Service For Fintechs And Corporates

Launching a card product in Africa is notoriously challenging, often representing a massive bottleneck for innovation. Fintechs and large corporates that want to issue cards face a gauntlet of challenges that slow down their launch timelines, hinder service quality, increase risk, and delay revenue generation.

It can take approximately 18 months for any business to launch a card product, and many fail to achieve it at all. This complex process demands technical expertise and a deep network across multiple critical partners: a card management company, a bank BIN sponsor, third-party processors, a payment network, and central bank approval.

This inefficiency isn't just a headache for businesses; it’s a systemic issue for major payment networks like Visa and Mastercard, which are heavily reliant on African banks for distribution. Since banks only reach a small segment of the population and businesses, this dependency keeps African countries’ card adoption among the lowest in the world and slows down the essential digitalization of cash in the economy.

WHAT DOES SCALE DO?

Scale is solving this problem by offering fintechs and corporates a comprehensive Card-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform.

Scale provides a pre-approved card management scheme product that includes all the typical card features.By plugging into this single solution, customers can launch a central bank-approved card product in a matter of weeks, dramatically reducing theirtime-to-revenue.

The fundamental basis of Scale’s solution is an Orchestration Issuance and Management Layer, called SOIL (Scale’s Orchestration Issuing Layer), which builds and manages the infrastructure across all the required partners. The team’s extensive experience in the African payments sector has enabled them to establish a strong network across the different stakeholders and central banks, simplifying an otherwise fractured process.

WHY WE INVESTED IN SCALE

1. Exceptional Founding Team

Scale is led by anexceptionally strong team with decades of combined experience in pan-Africanpayments and card management.

• Miranda Perumal (CEO) spent six years at Tutuka, a leading African card management business, and two years as a Senior Director of Visa’s Digital Partnerships Team.
• Prelin Perumal (COO) brings 13 years of experience in the African payments industry.
• The team is rounded out by Barbara Woollams (CMO), previously a senior BD Lead with Paymentology, and Roy     Markham (CTO), an accomplished and experienced tech executive.

2. Strategic Partnership and Go-To-Market

Scale has secureda strategic partnership agreement with Mastercard to provide them with a pipeline of potential fintech and corporate clients across the continent. They also have partnership agreements in place with relevant BIN sponsors in key launch markets. Acting as a distributor for major networks like Mastercard andVisa is an efficient, powerful route-to-market that significantly enhances the business’s scaling and exit potential.

3. Attractive Market Size

Scale is tackling a major, systemic problem faced by countless businesses across Africa. Scale’s solution is applicable to all businesses who wish to issue cards - from fintechs and corporates to Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and beyond. By providing the essential infrastructure to unlock card issuance, Scale is accelerating digital adoption across the entire continent.