Zazu taps Visa to launch online business accounts in Morocco

Zazu, a pan-African digital bank that serves small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has partnered with Visa to launch a digital business account for Moroccan entrepreneurs and small businesses.

The partnership embeds Visa into Zazu’s rebundled financial operating system for SMEs that offers the core utility of a bank, including accounts, cards, and transfers. Zazu can now issue Visa Business cards to Moroccan SMEs while plugging into its global payments infrastructure.

The partnership comes four months after Zazu raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to support its rollout in South Africa and Morocco and lay the foundation for broader pan-African expansion.

“Too many entrepreneurs waste time chasing their advisor, navigating overly complex interfaces, or disputing surprise fees. Zazu simplifies their day-to-day banking,” said Germain Bahri, co-founder of Zazu. “What this unlocks is the ability for us to issue Visa business cards to SMEs across Morocco and build a complete expense management layer around them,”

The new digital business account is designed to collapse separate tools into one. A business can open an account online through know-your-customer (KYC) checks, access a dashboard that combines invoicing and payment links, and immediately begin issuing cards for team expenses. 

The company claimed payments made through invoices or links are automatically reconciled, giving businesses real-time visibility of inflows and outflows without needing separate systems.

Zazu said it allows companies to issue multiple business cards across teams, each with its own limits and controls, which can be tracked in real time. The company said it has onboarded over 300 businesses into this ecosystem, including AI recruitment platform Jobzyn, Auto24, an online marketplace for buying and selling cars in South Africa, and Moroccan proptech startup, Yakeey.

Founded in 2024 by Rinse Jacobs and Germain Bahri, Zazu is positioning itself as a “Mercury-style” banking experience for Africa, built around Application Programming Interface (API)-driven integrations to connect with finance tools, such as bookkeeping, tax management, payroll, and cap-table management. The company is built on a partnership with Chari, a Moroccan fintech that provides access to technological infrastructure, a payment licence, and market expertise.

Zazu is backed by international investment funds, notably Plug and Play, Bell Ventures, and Ryad Ventures, as well as business angels from Solarisbank, Qonto, and Paymentology, alongside recognised figures from the Moroccan ecosystem: Ismael Belkhayat (Chari), Mohamed Benmansour (Binga / Nuitée), and Youssef Koun (Wonderful & Co.).