Kenyan-based payroll startup, Workpay, expands to Nigeria

Workpay, a Nairobi-based YC graduate, is expanding its operations to Nigeria. The cloud-based workforce management startup will now offer Core HR, Payroll, and employee record services to organisations in the country.

Founded in 2019, Workpay allows SMEs to easily manage and pay their employees from anywhere in Africa. Through a web portal and mobile self-service app, people can track time, process a locally compliant payroll, and pay their employees.

The startup has taken part in a host of accelerators in the last couple of years including YCombinator, Google accelerator, and Pangea accelerator.

So far, the company has over 300 active clients and processes $2,500,000 in monthly payroll disbursements to banks and mobile wallets.

“It is assuring to support companies like Flutterwave, Paystack, and Yoco to name a few, in their growth endeavors towards conquering the continent. I am confident that what we are building resonates with the pains of companies of different nature and continuously meets their needs as they grow,” Paul Kimani, the Workpay CEO and co-founder said.

“We believe Nigeria will be the key to unlocking immense potential for wide adoption, not only in West Africa but throughout Africa. Our solution cuts across similar sets of challenges we have seen in the Eastern hemisphere of the continent, therefore this is a chance to go big by all means legally-possible,” Kimani added.

Last year, Workpay received $2,100,000 in seed funding to fully accelerate expansion to other markets, beginning with Nigeria.

The funding was led by Kepple Africa Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Musha Ventures, P1 Ventures, and several angel investors. Kepple Africa Ventures had previously invested $100,000 in WorkPay in 2019. The startup is currently in the process of doing a Series A.

“In the next few months we will be progressively growing the team in Nigeria in various roles in business, customer support and others,” he said.

“The platform is constantly improving. A few weeks ago we totally revamped our User interface for a better experience for our customers in terms of navigation, user journey, new features and an overly nicer look. This has been done based on constant client feedback ensuring their pain points are fully considered.”