Cadana, a global payroll technology company specializing in emerging markets, announced it raised $7.4 million in funding to date led by Costanoa Ventures with participation by Better Tomorrow Ventures and 500 Startups.
Cadana has purpose-built payroll APIs and a white-label product suite that global talent marketplaces and HR platforms can utilize to improve their payroll services for workers across over 30 emerging economies including Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Pakistan, UAE, and Nepal. The funds will be used to expand its team, accelerate product development, and scale into new markets.
The global freelancer market is an estimated $1+ trillion industry driven by over 200 million global knowledge workers, creating a need for solutions that automate payroll and streamline employment and tax regulations globally. But most solutions currently don’t build for the financial infrastructure of emerging markets where employment laws are more nuanced. This puts companies at risk of breaking local labor laws, while the experience for workers also suffers. Remote workers often wait up to seven days for wages and then lose 5-7% in remittance fees – which is a problem that affects mostly emerging economies.
Cadana’s APIs and white-label products enable global workforce platforms to easily manage payments and payroll with seamless integration into their existing systems. And Cadana built a network of highly localized infrastructure to ensure compliance with all local employment and tax regulations, reducing fraud and liabilities from the inadvertent breaking of local employment laws.
In the past 18 months, Cadana has powered over $150 million in transactions across 32 countries while saving workers more than $2.5 million in fees.
Cadana was launched in 2021 by Albert Owusu-Asare, an immigrant from Ghana, and Ameer Shujjah, an immigrant from Pakistan. Before Cadana, both co-founders started their careers working in fintech for some of the world’s leading financial institutions.
KEY QUOTES:
“Both my co-founder and I grew up in emerging markets, so we understand the unique challenges for workers in these regions and the difficulties receiving timely payments. Workers in these regions support multiple family members and delays in payments and high remittance fees are unnecessary setbacks. Most solutions focus on streamlining the experience for the payroll administrator with little emphasis on the worker experience. We’ve built payroll solutions that facilitate a better experience for both.”
- Albert Owusu-Asare, CEO and co-founder of Cadana
“While the U.S. has seen a surge in tech platforms aiming to streamline payroll and benefits, the vast majority fall far short of addressing the unique challenges faced by employees and employers in emerging markets. Albert and Ameer have built exactly that, a purpose-built suite of white label products and APIs for emerging markets to power the next generation pay experience for millions of workers. This is why we’re so excited about what Cadana can do for the global payroll industry.”
- Amy Cheetham, partner at Costanoa Ventures
