PaidHR has wrapped up one of the more closely watched fundraising stories in Nigeria's SaaS ecosystem, and the final numbers turned out even stronger than initially planned. The Lagos based HR tech startup, founded in 2020 by Seye Bandele and Lekan Omotosho, first went public with a target when a Nigerian startup that helps businesses manage their HR functions was reported to be in talks with investors to raise a 1.5 million dollar seed round to expand into new markets and scale its cross border payroll product. That target was quickly surpassed. The round completes PaidHR's fundraising, which began with a 1.5 million dollar target in October 2024, and closed at 1.8 million dollars, led by Accion Venture Lab with strong participation from existing investors Zrosk, Chui Ventures, and Zedcrest Capital.

The oversubscription itself tells its own story about investor appetite for African HR infrastructure right now. Existing investors Zrosk, Chui Ventures, and Zedcrest Capital joined the oversubscribed round, the startup had initially set out to raise 1.5 million dollars, bringing PaidHR's total funding raised to 2.3 million dollars at the time, and to roughly 2.9 million dollars once earlier undisclosed raises were factored in.

The product driving much of that investor confidence is the cross border payroll feature the company built to help clients weather Nigeria's currency volatility. In 2024, PaidHR launched a cross border payroll feature as part of efforts to stave off the effects of a currency devaluation in its primary market, Nigeria, and cofounder and CEO Seye Bandele says it now makes up 15 percent of the startup's revenue, with plans to double down on it further using the new capital. That system supports 49 currencies, allowing companies with employees in different countries to pay them in their local currency, addressing a real structural gap for businesses managing distributed teams across the continent.

The results by the numbers reflect steady, compounding growth rather than a single explosive spike. In 2024, PaidHR processed 29 billion naira, about 18 million dollars, in salaries, nearly doubling the amount processed in 2023, while the platform has expanded beyond Nigeria to reach pan African SMEs and tech startups across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa, onboarding more than 20,000 employees along the way. The company has also rolled out an employee wallet app enabling workers to access and spend wages without transferring funds to a bank, a feature currently processing over 1.3 billion naira monthly.

With SMEs employing up to 80 percent of Africa's workforce yet often lacking the back office infrastructure to manage payroll and compliance efficiently, PaidHR's bet is that solving HR administration and cross border pay simultaneously gives it a durable edge over single feature competitors, a thesis its investors appear increasingly willing to back at scale.