VaultPay: Digital banking for Central Africa

VaultPay is a digital banking platform bringing Visa cards and modern financial services to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of 120 million people where 85% remain unbanked, and 90% of transactions happen in US dollars.

The Problem

The DRC has been overlooked by the fintech industry. While mobile money dominates most of Africa with razor-thin margins, the DRC's dollarized economy means our users transact at an average of $40/month, nearly 3x Nigeria's $15 average. Higher transaction values mean healthy unit economics from day one.

What We Built

Think Apple Wallet meets CashApp. We offer virtual and physical Visa cards, USD and CDF accounts, and we're rolling out an agency banking network that transforms local businesses into cash-in/cash-out points, following the Square model for Africa.

Traction

We launched in Q4 2025. In four months, with zero marketing spend:

• 17,000+ users signed up
• $20K MRR
• 80% are accessing formal financial services for the first time

Why Now

We're the first startup to secure a full payment license from the Central Bank of Congo, rather than operating under another bank's license, as most African fintechs do. This opened doors: Visa invested in our launch and is finalizing a deal recognizing us as their distribution partner for DRC expansion. Ecobank, one of Africa's largest banks, chose us to power its card experience, integrating its CashXpress program ($15M in monthly cash-in volume) into our platform.

Team

We left Airbnb and Google in Silicon Valley to build this. Backed by YCombinator, Tekedia Capital, Michael Seibel, executives from SoFi, Airbnb, and CashApp, and engineers from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Uber.

AI collapsed what should have taken years into months. We own our entire stack, including product, KYC, analytics, customer service, and data science, all with a very small team.

The Opportunity

Everyone chases the same markets in Africa. Meanwhile, we're building the financial rails for an entire nation before others catch on. That is our moat. DRC is currently undergoing a massive nationwide digital transformation and is one of the continent's largest consumer markets.

Our Ask

We're raising our seed round to accelerate distribution across the DRC and Central Africa. If you're an investor excited about the largest untapped fintech market on the continent, we'd love to talk.

If you want to join a fast-growing startup building the financial foundations of an entire region, we're hiring.

Email: ntambwa@vaultpay.io / cilaka@vaultpay.io / founders@vaultpay.io