Zone: Payment infrastructure company.

Zone: Powering the Future of Payments in Africa

Introduction

Zone, formerly known as Appzone Pay, stands as a pioneering force in the African FinTech landscape, operating as a blockchain-based payment infrastructure company. Its core mission is to revolutionize the fundamental mechanics of payment processing, moving beyond traditional, fragmented systems to a more interconnected, efficient, and transparent network. By leveraging distributed ledger technology, Zone aims to dismantle existing barriers to seamless financial transactions, paving the way for a more integrated digital economy across the continent and beyond.

At its heart, Zone is addressing the pervasive challenges of unreliable, slow, and expensive payment services that plague many emerging markets. It provides a robust and interoperable infrastructure designed to facilitate real-time payments, settlement, and identity verification. This foundational layer is critical for enabling businesses, financial institutions, and individuals to engage in digital commerce with unprecedented speed, security, and lower costs.

Ultimately, Zone is not just building a payment gateway; it is constructing a foundational digital public good that can serve as the backbone for an array of financial services. Its innovative approach promises to unlock significant economic opportunities, foster financial inclusion, and accelerate the adoption of digital payments, fundamentally reshaping how value is exchanged in an increasingly interconnected world.

History

The journey of Zone began within Appzone Group, a prominent FinTech powerhouse in Africa known for its comprehensive banking and FinTech solutions. Recognizing the profound inefficiencies and fragmented nature of the existing payment infrastructure, the team at Appzone embarked on a mission to build a more robust and future-proof alternative. This strategic decision led to the incubation and eventual spin-off of what would become Zone, with a singular focus on transforming payment processing.

Initially, Appzone Pay served as an internal solution and then expanded to offer payment services leveraging traditional rails. However, the vision evolved to incorporate blockchain technology to overcome inherent limitations of legacy systems, such as reconciliation issues, high failure rates, and lack of true real-time settlement. This pivot marked a significant turning point, committing the company to building a decentralized and more resilient infrastructure.

The official launch of Zone as an independent entity in 2024, alongside its successful funding rounds, signifies its transition from an innovative concept within a larger group to a standalone enterprise poised for rapid expansion. This history underscores a deep understanding of Africa’s financial landscape combined with a forward-thinking embrace of advanced technological solutions to solve systemic problems.

Founders

Zone’s inception is credited to a visionary team led by Obi Emetarom and Emeka Emetarom, who serve as Co-founders of the broader Appzone Group and key figures behind Zone. Obi Emetarom, specifically, takes on the role of CEO at Zone, driving the company’s strategic direction and technological innovation. Their backgrounds in enterprise software development and banking technology provided them with deep insights into the challenges faced by financial institutions and the need for a fundamental shift in payment infrastructure.

Their shared vision was to leverage cutting-edge technology, particularly blockchain, to create a payment system that is not only more efficient but also inherently more reliable and secure than traditional models. They identified the systemic inefficiencies in interbank payments and set out to build a solution that could truly enable instant, borderless, and fail-proof transactions. This commitment to fundamental change, rather than incremental improvements, defines their entrepreneurial spirit.

Under their leadership, Zone has cultivated a strong team of engineers, product specialists, and financial experts dedicated to executing this ambitious vision. Their ability to attract top talent and secure significant investment reflects their credibility and the compelling nature of the problem they are addressing, positioning Zone as a major disruptor in the global payment landscape.

Year Founded

While the underlying technology and development for Zone have been ongoing for several years within Appzone Group, Zone officially launched as a standalone entity and independent brand in 2024. This formal spin-off marked a strategic decision to dedicate focused resources and attention to its ambitious goal of becoming Africa’s first blockchain-based payment infrastructure. The incubation period allowed for robust development and testing, ensuring the platform was mature enough for widespread adoption upon its public unveiling.

The timing of Zone’s official launch in 2024 is particularly pertinent given the accelerating digital transformation across Africa and the increasing demand for instant and reliable payment solutions. The continent has seen significant growth in mobile money and digital payments, yet the underlying infrastructure often struggles to keep pace, leading to high failure rates and delayed settlements. Zone’s emergence aligns perfectly with this critical need for modernization.

Launching in 2024 also positions Zone to capitalize on the growing maturity and acceptance of blockchain technology within the financial sector. As regulatory frameworks evolve and trust in distributed ledger technology increases, Zone is well-placed to become a foundational layer for a new era of financial services, leveraging years of development and strategic planning to meet a pressing market demand.

Location

Zone is primarily headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, a vibrant hub for technology and finance in Africa. This strategic location places the company at the epicenter of one of the continent’s largest and most dynamic economies, providing direct access to a vast and rapidly digitizing market. Operating from Lagos allows Zone to deeply understand the local payment landscape, regulatory environment, and the specific needs of financial institutions and businesses within the region.

While its roots are firmly planted in Nigeria, Zone’s ambition extends far beyond national borders. The company aims to provide payment infrastructure across the African continent, recognizing the fragmented nature of payments and the immense potential for a unified, interoperable system. Its blockchain-based solution is inherently borderless, making it suitable for pan-African and eventually global expansion.

The choice of Lagos as its base also facilitates access to a rich talent pool of FinTech engineers, product developers, and financial experts. This local expertise, combined with a global vision, positions Zone to build a solution that is both relevant to African market realities and scalable to international standards, driving its mission to redefine payment infrastructure globally.

Industry

Zone operates primarily within the FinTech industry, specifically focusing on the critical sub-sector of payment infrastructure. This distinguishes it from consumer-facing payment apps or traditional payment processors by emphasizing the underlying rails that enable financial transactions between various participants, such as banks, FinTechs, and merchants. Its work is foundational, impacting how money moves digitally at a systemic level.

More precisely, Zone sits at the intersection of FinTech and blockchain technology, leveraging distributed ledger technology (DLT) to build a more robust, transparent, and efficient alternative to legacy payment networks. This makes it a key player in the emerging Web3 finance space, positioning itself as a pioneer in applying advanced decentralized technologies to solve real-world payment inefficiencies. It is fundamentally transforming the ‘plumbing’ of the financial system.

The broader industry trends Zone is capitalizing on include the global push for real-time payments, the increasing adoption of digital currencies, and the urgent need for financial inclusion in emerging markets. By providing a low-cost, high-reliability infrastructure, Zone is addressing a fundamental market gap, positioning itself as a vital component in the evolution of modern financial services.

Problem Being Solved

The global payment landscape, particularly in emerging markets, is plagued by significant inefficiencies. Traditional interbank payment systems often suffer from high transaction failure rates, slow settlement times, and exorbitant fees. Financial institutions face challenges with cumbersome reconciliation processes, a lack of transparency in transaction flows, and vulnerability to fraud due to outdated infrastructure. This results in significant operational overhead, frustrated customers, and lost revenue.

For businesses and consumers, these problems manifest as delayed payments, failed transactions that disrupt commerce, and high costs associated with cross-border or even domestic transfers. In regions with underdeveloped financial infrastructure, these issues exacerbate financial exclusion, making it difficult for individuals and small businesses to participate fully in the digital economy. The lack of interoperability between different payment systems further compounds these challenges, creating silos that hinder seamless financial interactions.

Zone is directly tackling these systemic flaws by offering a solution that replaces these fragmented and unreliable systems. It addresses the core problem of trust and efficiency in transactions by introducing a decentralized, real-time settlement layer. By eliminating intermediaries and providing cryptographic security, Zone aims to remove the points of failure, reduce costs, and enhance the overall reliability of digital payments, thereby unlocking greater economic participation and growth.

Solution/Product

Zone’s flagship product is a blockchain-based payment infrastructure that enables direct, real-time, and immutable transactions between financial institutions, businesses, and individuals. Unlike traditional systems that rely on numerous intermediaries, Zone’s platform allows participants to connect directly to its distributed ledger network, facilitating instant clearing and settlement without the need for batch processing or reconciliation delays. This significantly reduces transaction failure rates and operational costs.

The core of Zone’s solution lies in its proprietary blockchain network, which provides a secure, transparent, and high-throughput environment for processing payments. Key features include atomic swaps for instant settlement, cryptographic security for enhanced fraud prevention, and built-in smart contracts for automated payment rules and compliance. The platform also offers robust APIs, allowing seamless integration for banks, FinTechs, and other payment service providers to leverage its capabilities.

Zone’s unique selling proposition is its ability to provide a "payment kernel" that is superior to existing infrastructure in terms of reliability, speed, and cost-effectiveness. By offering an always-on, permissioned blockchain network, Zone ensures that transactions are processed instantly and irreversibly, addressing the critical pain points of high failure rates and long settlement cycles that plague many legacy systems, particularly across Africa.

Business Model

Zone employs a transaction-based business model, charging a fee for each successful payment processed through its blockchain infrastructure. This model aligns its success directly with the volume and value of transactions facilitated on its network, incentivizing efficient and reliable service delivery. The fees are typically a small percentage of the transaction value or a flat fee per transaction, designed to be competitive and significantly lower than the costs associated with traditional payment rails.

In addition to transaction fees, Zone may also offer premium services or tiered access for financial institutions requiring higher transaction limits, advanced analytics, or dedicated technical support. This provides avenues for diversified revenue streams beyond basic transaction processing, catering to the varying needs and scales of its diverse clientele, from large banks to agile FinTech startups.

The scalability of Zone’s blockchain infrastructure is central to its business model. As more financial institutions and businesses integrate with its network, the transaction volume is expected to grow exponentially, leading to substantial revenue generation without a proportional increase in operational costs. This inherent scalability, coupled with reduced infrastructure maintenance compared to legacy systems, makes Zone’s business model highly attractive and sustainable in the long term.

Target Market

Zone’s primary target market comprises financial institutions, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, and cooperative societies, that are looking to modernize their payment infrastructure. These institutions often grapple with outdated systems that hinder their ability to offer competitive, real-time payment services to their customers. Zone provides them with a ready-made, cutting-edge solution to upgrade their capabilities without extensive in-house development.

Another significant segment of its target market consists of FinTech companies and payment service providers (PSPs). These agile innovators require robust, scalable, and cost-effective payment rails to build and deliver their digital financial products and services. Zone offers them the underlying infrastructure to process transactions efficiently, allowing them to focus on their core product offerings and user experience rather than complex payment plumbing.

Furthermore, Zone aims to serve large merchants and enterprises that process high volumes of transactions and require highly reliable and cost-effective payment solutions. By integrating directly with Zone’s network, these businesses can reduce their payment processing costs, minimize failed transactions, and improve cash flow management, ultimately enhancing their operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Traction/Growth

While Zone officially launched as an independent entity in 2024, its underlying technology and operations have been gaining significant traction within the Appzone ecosystem prior to the spin-off. It has already successfully onboarded major financial institutions and FinTechs, processing a substantial volume of transactions and demonstrating the viability and robustness of its blockchain-based payment infrastructure in a live environment.

The successful completion of its seed funding round, which saw participation from prominent investors, is a clear indicator of market confidence in Zone’s technology and growth potential. This capital infusion will accelerate its expansion plans, enabling the onboarding of more banks and FinTech partners, and further developing its product offerings to capture a larger share of the digital payments market in Africa.

Zone’s growth trajectory is projected to be rapid, fueled by the increasing demand for instant payments, the inherent inefficiencies of traditional systems, and the widespread adoption of digital financial services across the continent. Its early achievements and strategic partnerships position it as a frontrunner in building the next generation of payment rails, poised for exponential growth in transaction volume and network participants.

Funding/Investors

Zone recently announced a significant milestone in its funding journey, successfully closing a $8.5 million seed funding round. This substantial investment underscores the strong investor confidence in its innovative blockchain-based payment infrastructure and its potential to revolutionize the African payments landscape. This seed round marks a crucial step in accelerating the company’s growth and expansion initiatives.

The funding round saw participation from a diverse and strategic group of investors, including TLcom Capital and Flourish Ventures. TLcom Capital is a well-known Africa-focused venture capital firm with a strong track record of backing successful tech companies on the continent, while Flourish Ventures is a global venture capital firm that invests in FinTech startups with a focus on financial health. Their involvement brings not only capital but also invaluable strategic guidance and network access.

This capital infusion will be primarily utilized to expand Zone’s network of integrated financial institutions, enhance its technological capabilities, and scale its operations across Africa. The investment will enable Zone to solidify its position as the continent’s leading blockchain-based payment infrastructure provider, accelerating its mission to provide ubiquitous and reliable digital payment services.

Valuation

While a precise public valuation for Zone after its $8.5 million seed round has not been explicitly disclosed, the size of the seed round itself provides an indication of investor confidence and the perceived potential of the company. A seed round of this magnitude typically suggests a post-money valuation ranging from tens of millions to potentially over a hundred million dollars, depending on the equity stake taken by investors. This positions Zone as a significant early-stage player in the African FinTech space.

Factors contributing to Zone’s strong valuation include its innovative use of blockchain technology to solve a critical, systemic problem in payments, the vast and underserved market in Africa, and its early traction with major financial institutions. The market opportunity for a robust, real-time payment infrastructure is enormous, and Zone’s first-mover advantage with a proven blockchain solution makes it a highly attractive investment.

As Zone continues to onboard more banks and FinTechs, demonstrate increasing transaction volumes, and potentially expand internationally, its valuation is expected to grow significantly. The long-term potential lies in becoming a foundational layer for digital finance, akin to a utility, which typically commands high valuations due to its indispensable nature and scalability.

Challenges Faced

One of the primary challenges Zone faces is the complex and evolving regulatory landscape across various African countries. Operating a payment infrastructure, especially one based on blockchain, requires navigating diverse regulatory frameworks, obtaining necessary licenses, and ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. The lack of harmonized regulations across the continent can slow down expansion and increase operational complexities.

Another significant challenge lies in achieving widespread adoption and interoperability with existing legacy systems. While Zone offers a superior solution, integrating with a multitude of traditional banking systems and convincing entrenched institutions to migrate to a new infrastructure requires substantial effort, trust-building, and technical heavy lifting. Overcoming the inertia and resistance to change within established financial systems is a continuous hurdle.

Furthermore, Zone operates in a highly competitive FinTech market, albeit with a unique value proposition. While its blockchain focus sets it apart, it still contends with traditional payment processors, established interbank networks, and other emerging FinTech solutions. Maintaining technological superiority, ensuring robust security, and continually innovating to stay ahead of the curve are critical for sustained success amidst rapid technological advancements and evolving market demands.

Future Plans

Zone’s future plans are ambitious, centering on expanding its footprint and solidifying its position as the premier blockchain-based payment infrastructure across Africa. The immediate priority is to significantly grow its network of integrated financial institutions and FinTech partners, aiming to onboard a substantial portion of banks and payment service providers across key African markets. This expansion will significantly increase transaction volumes and network effects.

Beyond geographical expansion, Zone plans to enhance its product suite by introducing more sophisticated features and services built atop its core infrastructure. This could include advanced data analytics for network participants, enhanced fraud prevention tools, and potentially support for new digital assets or cross-border payment corridors. The goal is to maximize the utility and value derived from its blockchain network for all stakeholders.

Ultimately, Zone envisions creating a truly pan-African and eventually global payment network that facilitates seamless, instant, and low-cost transactions for everyone. By continuously innovating and leveraging the power of distributed ledger technology, Zone aims to redefine the future of money movement, fostering greater financial inclusion and economic growth across underserved regions.

Lessons Learned

A key lesson learned by Zone, emerging from its journey within Appzone Group, is the critical importance of solving fundamental infrastructural problems rather than just superficial application layers. While consumer-facing apps are visible, the real systemic bottlenecks often lie deep within the archaic payment rails. Focusing on this "plumbing" allows for a more profound and scalable impact on the financial ecosystem.

Another significant takeaway is the power of combining deep industry knowledge with cutting-edge technology. Zone’s founders brought a strong understanding of African banking challenges, which allowed them to identify precise pain points that blockchain technology could uniquely address. This fusion of domain expertise and technological innovation is crucial for building solutions that are both technically robust and market-relevant.

Finally, Zone’s journey underscores the necessity of persistence and strategic pivots in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. The transition from a traditional payment solution within Appzone Pay to a dedicated blockchain infrastructure company demonstrates adaptability and a willingness to embrace transformative technology to achieve a more impactful vision. This iterative approach, learning from market feedback and technological advancements, is vital for long-term success in FinTech.