Workpay, the Kenyan cloud-based payroll and HR SaaS platform founded by Paul Kimani and Jackson Kibigo, now has Visa joining it in a $5 million funding round. The round led by Norrsken22, a tech growth-equity firm, also saw Y Combinator, Saviu Ventures, Axian, Plug n Play, Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures and Acadian Ventures participating. This funding will help the platform achieve profitability.
The fresh capital will also be used to enhance Workpay’s financial services offerings and employ artificial intelligence (AI) tools for performance management. Given the fact that each country in Africa follows different rules and regulations, it will not be easy to create a comprehensive payroll solution for all of Africa. However, the company is working on this.
Early last year, Workpay had successfully completed a pre-series A round of $2.7million.
The SaaS platform handles the complete employee lifecycle, along with that of contractors for various African businesses. It offers features such as payroll processing, time tracking, leave management, expense tracking, performance management, employee-benefits administration and employer of record (EOR) services among others.
The platform is already catering to over a thousand businesses across more than 20 countries in Africa.
Given its thorough knowledge of rules and regulations across Africa, it is in a position to support businesses that have a presence in multiple countries, when it comes to managing tax-related issues, payroll management and so on, all on a single platform.