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Moment, the Cape Town-headquartered payments infrastructure company, has closed a $22 million Series A round led by AlphaCode Venture Partners, with continued investment from General Catalyst and MultiChoice, and fresh backing from Canal+.
Canal+’s investment follows its acquisition of MultiChoice, which was already a Moment backer.
“Moment has driven down cost and improved quality simultaneously. The business provides world-class technology for enterprise-grade subscription and billing customers that operate in Africa,” said Thomas Follin, chief diversification officer at Canal+.
The company has now raised $55 million since its inception. The fund will be used to improve the payment network, upgrade the platform, and expand across the continent.
Africa’s payment system is fragmented. In South Africa, most payments are made in person, while Nigeria favors instant bank transfers, cash, and cards. Other countries have multiple mobile money providers without a unified system.
Moment offers merchants one platform to collect payments from various methods, allowing customers to pay their way.
Led by Joel Yarbrough, Moment provides omni-channel payment solutions, intelligent collection tools, and embedded financial services to some of Africa’s largest businesses.
The company claims to handle payments for 10 million people monthly and process 600,000 transactions daily, even with common power and connectivity issues.
Their platform supports payments through cards, mobile money, bank transfers, eWallets, recurring bank debits, and in-person transactions at over two million locations.
“Within three years of launch, we are processing for 10 million people a month across some of Africa’s leading brands. We’ve built a platform that can deliver on the particular challenges of the African market and help businesses get paid faster and at lower cost,” said Joel Yarbrough, CEO of Moment.
The company works with billers, insurers, and subscription platforms, offering recurring payments, customer outreach tools, failed payment recoveries across digital and in-person channels, and direct integration with enterprise billing systems.
Giulio di Giannatale, Technical Lead at Sanlam, added that: ”What excites Sanlam most about Moment isn’t just what they do today — it’s the roadmap we’re building together. From embedded insurance in payment flows, to data-driven collection optimisation, to serving the mass market across Africa with flexible, customer-first payment options, Moment is a genuine innovation partner. This fundraise gives them the runway to accelerate what we’ve already proven works, and we look forward to deepening our collaboration across the Sanlam group.“
“Africa’s payment complexity has long been a hidden tax on commerce. Moment is dismantling that barrier in a way we haven’t seen before: at continental scale, compliantly, and with a product that the market’s largest enterprises have already validated,” said Dominique Collett, general partner at AlphaCode Venture Partners.
Moment is headquartered in Cape Town with offices in Dubai, Johannesburg, Lagos, Kigali, and London.
