Zoona profile

Zoona is a third-party provider of mobile payments focused on building a reliable, cash-in/out network and facilitating B2C and B2B payments. The company provides technical assistance to client businesses and designs tailored end-to-end mobile payment solutions to meet specific needs. In agriculture, lead firms that contract with thousands of farmers are using Zoona to reduce individual payments. Instead, the firm makes one payment to Zoona, who then make e-voucher or mobile payments to each of the contracted farmers. E-voucher recipients can redeem the vouchers at input retailers or at cash-in/out agents. Zoona's technology enables mobile payments through mobile phones and unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) aggregation. Zoona's implementer and funder include USAID/PROFIT, which provided initial startup assistance, and private investors, who secured $4 million in funding in February 2012. This investment enabled Zoona to expand its team, improve the functionality of the platform, and expand operations to Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. Zoona's fees for institutional clients vary depending on the amount of technical assistance given in the project setup phase. Person-to-person transfers are charged an 8 percent fee, which is 25-40 percent cheaper than their formal competitors. Zoona's primary markets include Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. The company's platform currently supports 50,000 transactions valued at $3.5 million on a monthly basis and reaches over 60,000 people. Zoona's business model has achieved success by focusing on meeting the needs of the client with proprietary software. The company is also a Kiva non-MFI mobile payments partner, providing access to Kiva loans for Zoona agents to start their operations and provide initial liquidity. The impact of Zoona's mobile payments has been significant, particularly in Zambia. By using Zoona, Dunavant, the leading cotton producer in the country, was able to lower its costs, provide discounts to farmers while increasing their access to inputs, reduce side-selling, and improve the recordkeeping and sales of input suppliers. The e-voucher and mobile payment transaction histories through Zoona can also be used to build a financial identity for the farmer, which will help with future access to credit.