Problem

Duplo addresses the slow, manual, and fragmented way African businesses manage B2B money movement. Businesses often rely on manual invoices, cash-based processes, bank-statement matching, and disconnected approval workflows. The pain is operationally expensive: B2B transactions involve larger payment sizes and volumes, while 44% of surveyed businesses reported waiting more than 24 hours to receive payments from customers and partners. Duplo’s clearest initial use case was FMCG distribution, where distributors needed to collect digitally from retailer networks, reconcile receipts, and pay vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers faster.

The economics are compelling because delays tie up working capital, manual reconciliation consumes finance-team time, and inefficient workflows can restrict transaction volume. In its early pilot, Duplo reported that customers achieved more than 12% cost savings, while instant payments enabled FMCG distributors to transact in larger quantities and improve cash-flow visibility.

Product / Service

Duplo is a unified financial-operations platform for African businesses. It centralizes local and international payments, collections, approvals, expense management, invoicing, automatic reconciliation, tax workflows, and financial reporting in one system. Finance teams can manage expenses and approval chains, issue and track NRS-compliant e-invoices, make bulk payments, monitor spend in real time, and connect transactions with accounting tools such as Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage.

The platform is delivered both as an operating interface for finance teams and through APIs that can embed virtual accounts, payouts, foreign-exchange conversion, approvals, and reporting into other products. Its benefit is replacing fragmented payment administration with an auditable workflow that improves control and speed: Duplo targets rapid settlement, real-time reconciliation, and payments in more than 80 currencies across over 160 countries. It also has a South African offering, supported by Ozow’s account-to-account payment rails.

Market

Duplo competes in the African B2B payments, spend-management, accounts-payable automation, and broader financial-operations software market. Its target customers are SMEs, mid-market companies, large enterprises, and finance teams managing recurring supplier payments, collections, expenses, and reconciliation. The opportunity is substantial: the sub-Saharan African B2B payments market was characterized as a $1.5 trillion market in 2022, while the broader African SME payments market remains significantly under-digitized. The research does not establish a definitive named direct competitor set; Duplo is instead positioned against a mix of payment gateways, ERP/accounting systems, and standalone expense or AP tools. Ozow is a strategic payment-rail partner in South Africa rather than a direct competitor.

Duplo has demonstrated early commercial traction rather than appearing purely pre-revenue. It went live in January 2022, initially serving FMCG distributors and later finance teams at midsize and enterprise businesses; its 2022 reporting cited 20-plus enterprise customers, more than 12% pilot-period cost savings, 1,000% growth in businesses on the platform over three months, and 4,200% growth in total payment volume over five months. It also raised a $1.3 million pre-seed round and an oversubscribed $4.3 million seed round in 2022, and its current site presents case studies from hundreds of businesses. More recent evidence includes expansion into South Africa through the Ozow partnership, although the supplied sources do not disclose current revenue or payment-volume figures.