Bill-Splitting P2P Payments App Ziina Raises $7.5M in Seed Round

Dubai’s peer-to-peer (P2P) payment application, Ziina, a fintech backed by startup accelerator, the Y Combinator, has raised $7.5 million in a funding round.

The app, which enables users to split bill payments with friends, secured the new funds in a round led by Avenir Growth Capital and Glass 5 Global, with participation from Wamda Capital, FJ Labs, Graph Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Jabbar Internet Group, and Oman Technology Fund’s Jasoor Ventures.

Founded in 2020 by Faisal Toukan, Sarah Toukan, and Andrew Gold, Ziina launched as a payments app that allowed users to use their local UAE banks for cash-transfers with contacts without the fidgety need for account numbers or swift codes. 

The wider P2P payments market, of which simplified payments are central, was valued at $1.8 billion in 2019, with Statistics Market Research Consulting projections estimating its value to reach $4.5 billion in 2027, an annual growth rate of 11.8 percent.

As the MENA ecosystem spearheads the rapid adoption of fintech-friendly regulation, Ziina plans to use new funds to expand its services into Saudi Arabia and Jordan by 2022, with a vision of simplifying finance in the region,

Faisal Toukan, CEO and Co-Founder of Ziina, said that the new funds will “fuel our expansion plans into Saudi Arabia and support the launch of our highly anticipated wallet feature, which we will be introducing along with our new banking partner shortly.”

He added that the startup “will also use this financing to continue to attract top global talent to further elevate Ziina’s product and bring the application to the center of our users’ daily finances.”

Ziina’s existing team is led by tech experts bringing together their experience from Apple, Uber, Stanford, Coinbase, Careem, Oracle, and Yandex.