Author: Fintechnews Africa

Okra, Africa’s Open Finance API announced its $3.5m Seed raise. The round was led by US-based Susa Ventures, with participation from existing investors TLcom Capital, and newly joined Accenture Ventures. Okra is an Open Finance platform that enables developers and businesses build personalized digital services and fintech products for customers. Okra’s API is a one-stop-shop for fintech developers in Africa. Leading the round, San Francisco-based Susa Ventures is known as one of the premium seed-stage funds in Silicon Valley with notable early investments, including Robinhood, multi-billion dollar company Flexport, Andela and Fast. Susa is also known for co-investing with top…

Morocco is the third largest fintech hub in the Arab world, hosting 13% of all 400 active fintech solutions, or about 40 fintech solutions, according to a research by financial inclusion think tank Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP). The report, titled Fintechs Across the Arab World, looks at the fintech ecosystem across the 22 member countries of the Arab League, and how the sector has grown over the past years. CGAP identified 400 fintech solutions offered by over 320 unique fintech providers in the region as of November 2020. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosted the most fintechs…

Egypt’s digital payments provider Paymob announced that it has secured US$15 million in a second tranche of its Series A fundraising activity. It follows a first tranche of US$3.5 million, raised in July 2020. The capital raise was led by Global Ventures, the UAE-based venture capital firm. It also included A15, a leading tech investment fund and FMO, a Dutch entrepreneurial development bank. Paymob said that it will use proceeds to continue expanding its merchant network, enhance its suite of products further, and fuel its regional expansion efforts. The company added that it will accelerate its expansion in Saudi Arabia…

Appzone, a Pan-African fintech software provider building proprietary solutions for the continent’s banking and payments industries, has announced the close of its US$ 10 million Series A round. The round was led by CardinalStone Capital Advisers with participation from V8 Capital, Lateral Investment Partners, Constant Capital, and Itanna Capital Ventures. Appzone said that the new round will bolster investment in its core technologies and kickoff a wave of new country expansions. Currently, Appzone’s clients spread across Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), Tanzania, Senegal and Guinea. To-date, the company has reportedly raised US$ 15 million in equity funding.…

EFG Hermes, a financial services corporation in frontier emerging markets (FEM), announced the launch of a new partnership between its NBFI subsidiaries valU for consumer finance and PayTabs Egypt with LuLu Group International in Egypt, a Middle East hypermarket and supermarket chain. The partnership will allow LuLu shoppers to benefit from valU’s affordable and convenient financing plans, powered by PayTabs Egypt’s payment gateway. The collaboration with valU and PayTabs Egypt will roll out in two phases. The first phase will avail valU’s installment plans to shoppers through PayTabs Egypt platform at LuLu Hypermarket’s physical outlets. The second phase will further…

With a booming fintech sector, the Nigerian government and regulators are now setting the foundation for open banking, releasing regulatory frameworks for the safe and efficient transmission of data with hopes that subsequently new, innovative financial solutions will emerge and help improve financial inclusion. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) issued the Regulatory Framework for Open Banking in Nigeria on February 17, 2021, establishing principles for data sharing across the banking and payment ecosystem. The framework, which addresses issues including data and API access requirements, principles for APIs, data, technical design, and information security specifications, is aimed at promoting innovation,…

Home to over 150 fintech companies, Kenya has one of the biggest and most developed fintech ecosystems in the African continent, owning to the proliferation of mobile phones and the rise of mobile money. Similarly to other developing markets, Kenya’s fintech wave has been built on mobile phones, whose adoption in the continent accelerated around the turn of the millennium and are now pervasive. Telecommunication giant Safaricom recognized early on the potential of mobile phones and the mobile channel to deliver banking and financial services to the masses. In 2007, it launched M-Pesa, a SIM-based mobile banking service that requires…

Tugende, a technology enabled asset finance company in East Africa, announced that it has closed $3.6 million in additional equity financing, which is an extension of the firm’s Series A, for which the first close was announced in September 2020. The round was led by Partech, with participation from Enza Capital and regionally based angel investors, bringing the total amount of equity capital raised for the Series A to $9.9 million. The new funding will be deployed immediately by Tugende to support its growth and closure of new debt capital to fuel its portfolio growth in Uganda and Kenya. Based…

Rwanda Finance Limited (RFL), a state owned company mandated by the government, has launched the Kigali International Financial Center (KIFC). KIFC said in a statement that it aims to become one of the leading international financial centers on the continent. The entity has developed a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework, robust infrastructure, and a skilled and dynamic workforce that will help investors develop their interests across Africa. Rwanda Finance is the agency mandated to promote the center. KIFC has already attracted a number of high profile companies, investors and service providers and is already a member of the World Alliance…

The Fintech News Network is pleased to announce the launch of our eighth publication; Fintech News Africa. The Fintech News Network is an industry publication covering fintech and digital news across the globe. Our readers are from established financial institutions as well as budding fintech startups. Eight publications are currently present in four continents, covering fintech news across 44 different countries. The list of publications include; Fintech News Switzerland (soft launched end of 2014), Fintech News Singapore (2015), Fintech News Hong Kong (launched in 2016), Fintech News Middle East (launched in 2017), Fintech News Malaysia (launched in 2018), Fintech News…

Ethiopia’s large population of unbanked, the government’s current digital push, and recent finance reforms are bringing new opportunities for fintech startups and financial innovation. With more than 112 million people, Ethiopia is the second-most populous nation in Africa and is home to the fastest growing economy on the continent registering double-digit year-over-year growth for the past 10 years. Nearly 65% of Ethiopia’s population is under 25 years old, and there are some 45 million mobile subscribers with 17 million smartphones, showcasing the proliferation of mobile devices. At the same time, Ethiopia is also one of the poorest in Africa with…

African payments company Flutterwave announced that it has secured US$170 million during its Series C round, attaining unicorn status with a valuation of more than USD $1 billion. The round was led by growth-equity firms Avenir Growth Capital and Tiger Global Management LLC. Other investors include DST Global, Early Capital Berrywood, Green Visor Capital, Greycroft, Insight Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Tiger Management, WorldpayFIS, and 9yards Capital. Founded by entrepreneur Olugbenga Agboola in 2016, the fundraise brings the total investment in Flutterwave to US$225 million. Flutterwave will invest the new capital to accelerate customer acquisition in existing and international markets, as well…

Citi has announced the launch of a new service for its institutional clients that speeds up the processing of their cross-border payments through the digitisation of supporting documents. With Citi’s new service, documents can be completed, processed and tracked digitally via Citi’s CitiDirect BE® electronic banking platform. The platform also provides users with upfront details about the documentation and data requirements for different payment types. This single-window service reportedly creates clear linkages between payments and related documents and cuts document fulfillment and processing times by more than half. In addition, users can also track the status of their documents on…

Egyptian fintech startup NowPay signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Export Development Bank of Egypt (EBE) for a credit facility to fund NowPay’s current salary advances product and future development of new products. NowPay allows corporate employees to get their salaries in advance any time in the month through its mobile app, which means access to emergency funding anytime, hence better management of their budget. Launched in 2019, NowPay aims at lowering employees’ financial stress by improving the financial wellness for employees. The company most recently raised $2.1 million in seed investment in May 2020 in a round that…

Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) has collaborated with Visa to launch their fintech training programme for Egyptian fintech startups and entrepreneurs. The ITIDA-VISA Mentorship Programme aims to enhance cooperation in supporting entrepreneurship, encouraging startups to develop innovative fintech solutions, and promoting digital payments in Egypt. Furthermore, the shortlisted fintech startups will avail Visa’s global partner network to empower their business and enrich their market experience. Upon joining the programme, the participating fintech startups and entrepreneurs will be eligible to access VISA’s development Application Programming Interfaces (API), which facilitates integration with its global network and experimenting with VISA’s sandbox.…

The Bank of Ghana launched a regulatory and innovation sandbox pilot in collaboration with fintech firm EMTECH which provides cloud-based software specifically for central banks. The sandbox is a supportive and controlled policy environment that enables firms to test innovative products, services and business models under the supervision of a regulator. It will provide a forum for financial sector innovators to interact with the sector regulator to test digital financial service innovations while evolving enabling regulatory environment. In this regard, the bank and the innovator are able to assess the usefulness, viability and safety of innovations through shared understanding of…

Fintech funding in Africa jumped 49.3% in 2020 to US$160 million. The amount was raised by 99 fintech startups, making fintech the dominant tech sector of 2020, a new report by regional startup news and research portal Disrupt Africa found. The annual African Tech Startups Funding Report, released on January 21, 2021, looks at the major tech funding trends observed in Africa last year. According to the study, fintech attracted the lion’s share of 2020’s African tech startup funding with more startups securing funding than any other sector and a combined total that dwarfed all others. Not only fintech surpassed…

South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya have historically been the fintech hubs of Africa, but the next chapter for the industry in the continent will likely come from new, fast-growing ecosystems, including Ethiopia, Ghana and Rwanda, according to a new report. The Africa Fintech: State of the Industry 2020 report, produced by Africa Fintech Summit in partnership with EFG EV Fintech and released in October 2020, looks at the state of fintech in Africa, outlining the key trends and emerging fintech ecosystems to watch out for. Ethiopia According to the study, Ethiopia is undergoing an unprecedented acceleration of its digital transformation…

In Tanzania, the fintech sector is still nascent with less than 50 companies, among which 68% in their early stages and 20% still at the pre-startup stage and not fully launched yet, a research found. An assessment of the Tanzanian fintech landscape by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), in partnership with Tanzania’s Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Commission and local innovation hub Sahara Ventures, identified just 34 active fintech startups in the country as of November 2020. These fintech startups focus on six market segments – payments and remittances, lending and financing, insurance, savings, investments, and personal finance…

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has released a draft document outlining a five-year digitalization plan to modernize the country’s domestic payment landscape. The document, titled Kenya National Payments System Vision and Strategy 2021 – 2025 and released in December 2020, stresses the regulator’s commitment to establishing a regulatory landscape that’s conducive to innovation, as well as embracing open banking and APIs, among other key areas of focus. In the document, the CBK says it will work to define standards for API development and mandate data portability with hopes that more options and innovative solutions will be made available for…