Emerging Capital Partners (ECP) has agreed to acquire a substantial stake in Mauritius-based Inter Africa Transport Forex (IATF), which operates a financial technology platform.

Paul Maasdorp, Managing Director of ECP, said: “We are excited to partner with the IATF team and founders to support their next phase of growth. IATF has built an innovative financial technology platform custom made for the logistics industry providing substantial value to their transport customers.”

“CEOs, CFOs and COOs of companies that move goods across Africa appreciate the simplicity, cost benefits and time savings of managing their fleet costs through a central platform from the comfort of their own office or home. The founders are well known to ECP and we are excited to partner with them on another investment,” he added.

IATF’s online platform centralizes payments for diesel, cash pay-outs, road tolls, border payments, parking, insurance, mechanical payments and other electronic payments making planning of journeys, cost control and fleet management simpler and more efficient.

The platform enables its customers – transport companies, especially cross-border ones – to better procure, manage and track their costs.

IATF is able to substantially reduce costs for its customers based on its purchasing scale and through improved cost control by providing upfront line-of-sight of necessary costs across journeys and live real-time tracking and visibility of these costs as and when they are incurred.

Businesses with cross-border transportation or logistics needs often handle these transactions in cash, providing thousands of US dollars in cash to drivers at the beginning of their journeys to pay for all expenses along their routes.

This creates both a security risk for the driver and presents a major source of cash leakage along the road.

Now with IATF’s user-friendly technology and extensive network, business owners can make one central electronic payment per trip online.

IATF clients not only benefit from decreased cash leakage en route, but also from lower pricing which IATF secures by aggregating purchase volumes.

Transport Forex operates this innovative technological platform in cooperation with more than 150 service points located alongside major roads in South Africa, Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Mozambique, Namibia, Malawi, and Rwanda.

IATF’s around the clock customer service call centre also means that assistance is a phone call away.

Carel van der Wath, Head of Technology and a founder at IATF said: “We have partnered with ECP on another investment and know the deep value they bring in terms of strategic insights, organization development and geographic expansion. We are excited to have them on board once again as a value-added partner to help drive our growth.”

Johan Steyn, CEO at IATF, added: “We are excited to have ECP as a partner to assist us to deepen our presence in our existing markets and to expand our network across Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, Angola and other African countries. We are also expanding the rich range of capabilities and products that our technology platform provides.”