South Africa’s Hello Paisa ,The Sun Exchange and Cameroon’s WeCashUp have been declared this year’s winners of the Innotribe Startup Challenge held in Mauritius on Wednesday 18 May, in partnership with SWIFT’s African Regional Conference (ARC).
The three received a 10,000 USD cash prize and invitations to attend Sibos, SWIFT’s annual global financial services conference, taking place from 26-29 September in Geneva. The startups will have the opportunity to share the stage with FinTech experts, providing great insights on innovation happening across Africa to the financial industry at large.
Commenting on Africa’s innovation landscape, Sido Bestani, Head of Middle East, Turkey and Africa at SWIFT says: “This year’s Innotribe Startup Challenge highlights the exciting developments across African FinTech and the range of different business sectors represented shows that innovation is not just focused in one area.”
Hello Paisa is a low cost international money transfer solution for remittances while The Sun Exchange is a peer-to-peer lending platform for investors to fund solar energy projects across the globe. Cameroon’s WeCashUp has created a cross border mobile money platform, enabling users to make secure payments via their mobile phones all across Africa.
The Mauritius showcase was the first regional showcase to be held in 2016. The next regional Startup Challenge will be held in Mexico City on 29 June during SWIFT’s Latin American Regional Conference .
Fabian Vandenreydt, Global Head of Securities Markets, Innotribe and the Swift Institute at SWIFT, “Our partnership with the SWIFT African Regional Conference over the last two years has highlighted how much SWIFT’s member institutions are keen to understand the FinTech innovation that is happening in their own communities and the importance for local startups to benefit from in-depth industry feedback and gain exposure at a global stage.”
