The archive · Money & Fintech · Product decision · 2020-2024
Ziina's P2P-to-SME payments bet: YC-backed Dubai fintech hits $300M volume
Ziina started as a UAE bill-splitting app, then bet SMEs would ditch cheques for instant payments; $22M Series A and $300M annualized volume
Ziina
What the business is
Consumer P2P transfers plus SME payment links, gateway, POS and QR payments in the UAE.
Starting capital：$7.5M seed (Y Combinator W21); $22M Series A led by Altos Ventures (Sept 2024); $30M+ total
How it started
Founded in 2020 in Dubai by Faisal Toukan, Sarah Toukan and Andrew Gold; joined Y Combinator's first 2021 cohort, raised a $7.5M seed, and launched its P2P app to 20,000 retail customers in June 2021.
What happened
Merchants started using the wallet to get paid, so Ziina added payment links (Apple Pay, Google Pay, cards), a Shopify/WooCommerce payment gateway, QR and POS, and CRM. By Sept 2024 it served 50,000 retail and business customers, claimed 34% month-over-month customer growth and 10x revenue growth in a year, was processing ~$300M annualized volume, and held the UAE Central Bank's stored-value facility licence.
No ending yet — it is still running.
Background
Ziina was founded in Dubai in 2020 as a social peer-to-peer payment app for splitting bills, and it launched to 20,000 retail customers in June 2021 after Y Combinator's first 2021 cohort and a $7.5M seed. The bet was that UAE small businesses, underserved by slow bank payments, would adopt instant digital payments at scale.
The shift happened organically: business users began using the wallet to collect payments, so Ziina expanded into payment links, a Shopify/WooCommerce gateway, QR and POS payments, and CRM tools. By September 2024 the startup reported 50,000 retail and business customers, 34% month-over-month customer growth, revenue up tenfold in a year, and roughly $300 million in annualized transaction volume.
The $22M Series A led by Altos Ventures, with Y Combinator, Avenir Growth, Activant Capital, MEVP and others, brought total funding past $30M and made Ziina the first venture-backed startup to hold a stored-value facility licence from the UAE Central Bank. It was planning ZiiCard for expense management and expansion into Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
What has to be true
- Starting with consumers gave Ziina distribution and a brand, but the monetizable demand came from businesses.
- Observing merchants repurposing the P2P wallet was cheaper and faster than a top-down SME go-to-market.
- A central bank licence plus product-led growth (55% organic customers, no sales team) de-risked the expansion.
- The UAE's 560,000 SMEs, ~94% of companies, gave one city-sized market enough depth to fund regional expansion.
What can be applied
A consumer app can stumble into a bigger market through how customers misuse it; the hard part is rebuilding the product around the paying segment without discarding the habit that brought them in.
Aftermath
As of Sept 2, 2024, Ziina was scaling: it was onboarding its first sales hires (some from Revolut), preparing the ZiiCard expense card, and planning entry into Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The CEO said the goal was 200,000 monthly active businesses within four years, comparing Ziina's trajectory to Nubank in Brazil. The P2P service remained live alongside the SME platform.
Sources
- Ziina banks $22M as growth explodes for the UAE-based fintech for small businesses
- Dubai fintech Ziina raises $22 million Series A to grow its payments platform for businesses
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