The rising number of social media users and online shoppers on the continent has fuelled a rise in social commerce. Nigerian startup Vendy joins a growing list of startups looking to become the de facto payment layer for Africa’s social commerce economy, beginning with WhatsApp. In the long run, the startup is looking to embed its payments infrastructure across any chat interface where commerce takes place.
Launched in 2022 by Kayode Disu and Peter Ekunkoya, YC-backed Vendy presents as a WhatsApp storefront where sellers can set up a catalog and buyers can browse, shop, and pay. Sellers can easily build eye-catching product catalogs with prices, descriptions, and images. On the buyer side, the UX embraces what most users know from mainstream online stores: you can browse, run keyword searches, add items to a virtual cart, and check out, all through a dedicated interface that overlays inside WhatsApp, not in a separate app or browser window.
Vendy integrates directly with major African banks and mobile money providers including Sterling, Kuda, Opay, FCMB, Momo, and First Bank, allowing users to pay seamlessly from linked accounts.
The Widget is the moat
While Vendy’s initial product is a storefront built for WhatsApp, the startup’s core insight is that with buying and selling now largely happening on social media, the real opportunity lies in controlling the payment layer not the storefront. Vendy is betting that whoever enables seamless payments within these conversations will ultimately own the most valuable piece of the social commerce stack.
Its key feature is a payment widget that lives on the buyer’s device, not inside WhatsApp.
“The infrastructure for chat-based commerce in Africa is still missing,” said Disu, Vendy’s CEO. “We’re building the UPI for Africa starting on WhatsApp.”
The company is betting that its widget—which it claims sets it apart from other social commerce tools—connects merchants to customer payments across bank accounts, wallets, cards, and mobile money. It’s not built into WhatsApp (for security reasons), but it runs seamlessly beside it.
When a buyer taps “Pay” on a WhatsApp storefront, the Vendy widget launches instantly, showing available linked payment options. The widget requires no account sign-ups, no app downloads, or redirects to third-party sites. For now, the business model is a mix of a flat 1% transaction fees on payments and tiered SaaS subscriptions for businesses (from free to $200/month).
Competitors like Owo by Mono (a P2P payments tool), Chpter (WhatsApp CRM/payments hybrid in Kenya), Xara, Catlog, are either consumer-first, reliant on web redirects, or still dependent on external payment processors. Vendy has built its own processor which is regulated by the CBN, PCI DSS certified, NDPR compliant, and—crucially—a Meta-approved WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP).
This deep integration allows them to offer services others can’t, including branded storefronts, omnichannel reach (Telegram, Instagram, and AI tools like Lua are integrating Vendy’s payment flow) and a developer ecosystem that lets third-party bots or vertical apps plug into the widget to power payments.
Vendy’s goal is to not to be seen, but to be on every social platform where money and value is exchanged.
Vendy’s future bet
In the long term, Vendy’s bet is clear: when Meta or any social media platform finally expands payments in Africa, they’ll need an on-the-ground partner who already built the infrastructure. Vendy wants to be on that shortlist of partners.
Vendy’s playbook is familiar: Stripe started with devs. Paystack with merchants. Wave with mobile wallets. Vendy is going where all three intersect, chat-first, mobile-native, payment infra.
However, Vendy still faces key challenges on its path to scale. Its reliance on WhatsApp means it’s ultimately dependent on Meta’s platform policies and ecosystem. Expanding across Africa also brings regulatory complexities, as each market has its own compliance requirements.
Additionally, direct bank integrations are technically demanding, and payment infrastructure varies widely—what works in Nigeria may not apply in Kenya or Francophone Africa.
Scaling across this fragmented landscape won’t be straightforward. Still, Vendy has clarity about what it wants to be. It isn’t another payment app. It wants to be your preferred payment method next time you buy something from a WhatsApp or Instagram vendor.
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