When I interview founders that have launched a startup in the FinTech sector, I am always eager to know what they view as the biggest challenge in their sector. Do I need to emphasize the rise of start-ups in this sector that made us wonder if we’d even be needing banks in some years to come.
You can take this poll before we move…
What do you think is the greatest challenge of the African FinTech sector?
— Daniel A. Moses (@Oluwadaniemoses) November 20, 2017
Chatting with some founders operating in the space, below are the highlights of their responses.
Edmond Adokwu, is the founder of SafeTrade, a secured way of carrying out transactions (i.e. Item and Service transactions). According to him,
The biggest challenge would be earning the trust of the public. Earning the trust of the public is a milestone every company in the Fintech space will have to overcome.
On his own hand, Aziz Yerima, CEO PayDunya says CASH is the greatest challenge of the African FinTech industry.
Africans still love using money in cash and this is our big barrier.
Weeks back, we were in touch with Tonnie Nyabuto, CEO of BrillantPay, which was created to solve the enormous payment problem that comes with e-commerce. But what does Tonnie see as the greatest challenge in this industry? See below:
The greatest challenge in FinTech is access to data. Most FinTech solutions ride on banks and these banks aren’t as open. Banks don’t share their data except within themselves. Although lately a few banks have started offering open APIs for FinTechs, they are still reluctant and cautious in doing so. To create better FinTech solutions, there is need to access data, synthesize it well and then develop a useful solution.
Bernie Akporiaye, Co-founder of MaTontine, a startup that provides small loans thinks regulation is the greatest challenge.
“We have found the regulators to be very inflexible. Also it seems to me that the financial services rules being used to regulate today’s FinTech companies were designed decades ago for legacy financial institutions.
And lastly, Cedric Ngondi who co-founded crowdfunding platform Guanxi invest thinks there are 3 main challenges faced by the fintech industry in Africa right now which include:
Payments methods, culture and behavior of the local population and regulations.
