Capi Money: Unlocking Global Trade for Emerging Markets

Picture this: You're running a thriving import business in Africa with eager customers and reliable suppliers. But there’s a major hurdle—paying your international suppliers. Foreign exchange fees eat up to 10% of your invoices and your bank delays payments for weeks. Your supplier won't ship without the deposit, leaving you low on stock and at risk of being cut off. Instead of focusing on growth, you're stuck navigating FX and payments challenges every month.

This isn't a hypothetical scenario—it’s the daily struggle faced by millions of businesses across Africa, Latin America and Asia. While the world talks about borderless commerce and instant payments, businesses in these markets are still stuck with inefficient, paper-based processes that feel like they belong in another century. We hear talk about globalisation and financial inclusion, but the reality is one of US and European banks stepping back from Africa over the last 20 years.

Meet Capi Money.

Co-founders Mitch Riley, Scott Liddle, and Tom Watson launched Capi—a 24/7 self-service platform that allows importers to pay invoices of up to $/€1 million to their suppliers around the world within 48 hours—to cut out middlemen, speed up transactions, and reduce excessive fees. Mitch and Scott have deep knowledge of this market having previously been C-level executives at Taptap Send, a leader in cross-border remittances in Africa, Asia, and LatAm. While the consumer market for remittances is well served, they saw the huge opportunity to meet the needs of small and medium sized businesses.

Thirteen months after going through Y Combinator and launching their first market, Capi has grown from zero to multi-million-dollars in revenue, all achieved with a lean team of just 13 people.

From iZettle to Klarna, Trade Republic and Taxfix, we have a deep heritage in fintech at Creandum and one of the best track records of picking European winners. Three things stand out for us with Capi:

• The Team - from go-to-market to marketing to operations and finance, Mitch and Scott led nearly every function at Taptap Send. They not only know the African payments market inside-out, but also have deep experience in scaling a business in this space, driving over 60x revenue growth and launching over 25 new markets at Taptap. Tom brings the technical expertise having co-founded, scaled and exited Hubble.

• The Product - best product wins and the team has built an easy-to-use platform with speed, reliability and security at its core. Their self-serve onboarding process offers huge potential for viral growth and their 24/7 self-service international payments platform is a first for the regions they serve.

• Their Vision - according to the World Bank, the value of imports into sub Saharan African alone is over $400bn. Capturing just a fraction of this is a massive opportunity and Africa is just the beginning. Their vision is to deploy their platform across all emerging markets.

Small and medium sized businesses sit at the heart of any economy. In unlocking global trade for SMEs in emerging markets, Capi can become a catalyst for economic growth and job creation.

Capi is live in four African countries today and plans to expand their footprint rapidly. We're thrilled to partner with Mitch, Scott, Tom and the entire Capi team on this journey. Their dedication to solve this massive problem for emerging markets and the tenacity, speed, and hardcore execution demonstrated by this team is second to none. 

Interested in joining one of the most exciting startups tackling emerging markets? They’re hiring—check out their open positions here.