Interswitch Founder and CEO, Mitchell Elegbe, will be speaking at the virtual 2020 edition of TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 on September 16. Mr. Elegbe, founded the company in Nigeria in 2002 in a bid to connect Nigeria's banking system. Interswitch was a digital payments pioneer in Africa, predating even Kenya's prolific ...
South African bank, Nedbank is testing its newest innovation, a contactless payments solution. This the first payment's solution of its kind in Africa at this point. The quote, 'tap-on-phone' technology converts merchants and mobile owners' mobile phones into ‘payment acceptance devices’ Contactless payments ensure SMEs have to easily and securely ...
XENO, a Ugandan goal-based investment management firm has raised $430,000 to help clients plan, save, and invest for their financial goals. XENO announced it recently raised $150,000 from Nordic Impact Funds in a pre-seed round and did not disclose the earlier investors in the round bringing the total fundraising to $430,000. Launched ...
OyaPay, an offline payment and checkout company, which lets users pay merchants with their smartphone by scanning a QR code, has released a timely update to its mobile application. This time, adding one very important feature. The feature, “Order ahead” allows users and business owners to order, receive orders and ...
Kenya’s Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) has partnered with the African Guarantee Fund for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (AGF) and Nairobi-based fintech firm- ECap, to introduce a solution that will see suppliers of Corporate Institutions, receiving payment for goods and services offered, without having to wait for the stipulated credit ...
Talent development is the single greatest challenge most firms in emerging markets face. To help solve these problems, LeapFrog Investments has launched the LeapFrog Talent Accelerator (LTA), the private equity industry’s first talent development programme for CEOs, C-suite executives and middle managers in emerging market growth firms. According to Lata Reddy, ...
Mobile has become a platform of creating and consuming innovative digital solutions not only in Kenya but in Africa. A number of reasons are driving this trend- including the expansion of advanced mobile networks. Also, phone manufacturing companies are launching new smartphones every month, with improved features with every ...
Kenya's peer-to-peer lending platform Pezesha has unveiled a new feature allowing borrowers to apply for loans via SMS. The firm said the feature will require borrowers to only send the word “Apply” to Pezesha’s SMS short code 22235 to get loans instantly. These feature will also be helpful to borrowers who have no smartphones ...
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 ...
LaLa World, a blockchain financial system has launched to counter the inherent shortcomings and apprehensions of the traditional financial system to bring the underbanked and underserved population of the world into the financial mainstream. According to the firm, it aims to venture where “no banker has gone before” with ...
Naspers’ PayU has led a $115 million round in Remitly, a digital remittance firm based in North America, in a Series D funding. The Series D financing will be led by Naspers’ fintech investment division PayU, a global online payment service provider. Existing Remitly investors Stripes Group, DFJ, and DN Capital will also ...
Payments and Transfers company Kocela emerged the winner of the Payments and Transfer Company category in the just concluded African Fintech Awards. The event, which was held at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa was held on 12th & 13th 2017 and saw weeks of voting and intense ...
Ghana's Bloom Impact, a machine learning loans marketplace accessible from smartphones has raised undisclosed funding from Engineers Without Borders Canada, EWB Ventures, an early-stage investor in innovative Africa-based social enterprises. EWB has also invested in M-Shule, Numida Technologies, FarmDrive and Rent-to-Own. Its latest investment in Africa will allow MSMEs to create a digital profile, learn about and apply for ...
DFS Lab, a fintech accelerator funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is accepting applications for their third fintech bootcamp, which will be held Dec. 3-9, 2017 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. DFS will give up to USD 50K in funding to top fintech businesses and six months in ...
Kenya's Pezesha.com a peer-to-peer micro-lending marketplace for Africa has been selected to participate at the upcoming Blackbox Connect 20 accelerator programme, a two-week residential programme for startup founders from across the globe. Holding in Silicon Valley in November this year, Blackbox is an entrepreneur-first approach that aims to make entrepreneurs ...
Africa has experienced a rampant rise of inventions and startups that have gone a long way from the minds of inventors to disrupting the Sub Saharan ecosystem solving very many problems that have been a setback to the growth of the continent for ages. From the rise of ...
In most communities that consists of majority of the middle class, you'd never fail to see cooperative societies. This is a type of cooperation where members contribute money in a regular manner. When one member need finances for a particular project, he could take a loan and repay back in ...
With the advent of Internet of Things, data is one of the most important assets in the world yet its not covered by standard property insurance policies. Therefore any interruption to an organisation's systems means an interruption to firms to conduct their core businesses. Data protection should therefore be at ...
Do you need a soothsayer to tell you how important savings is in our financial life? Of course, you don’t. As humans, adopting a regular savings culture seem to be an uphill task but it is very good that some startups are trying very much to simplify this process, and ...
Fintech firms Traderoot and Sureswipe have partnered to launch a platform brings high-end quick and simple reconciliation and transaction matching by transaction type at the end of each day, obviating recons on multiple card machines, separate POS systems, cash and vouchers etc. According to Traderoot’s CEO, Eugene von Engelhardt, this ...
Applications are open for the 2017 Zambezi Prize, which is aimed at raising awareness of entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, encouraging the flow of capital to financial inclusion ventures, and advancing entrepreneurship and financial inclusion to fuel broad-based prosperity. The Zambezi Prize is presented by the Legatum Center for Development and ...
Pineapple, a peer-to-peer insurance tech startup based in Johannesburg, South Africa has secured seed funding of R5.2m from Lireas Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Hannover-Re Group Africa, in return for a minority shareholding in a move set to bring their innovative insurance offering to market. With the seed funding, Pineapple ...
Hey, I was doing a bit of thinking and I came up with this. Are we truly approaching a period in Nigeria when we might not need the services of most conventional commercial banks? Emphasis on “conventional”. Of course, FinTech startups could be referred to as “banks” but not conventional ...
Half of the world is unbanked, McKinsey Over 2.5 billion of the world’s adults remain unbanked and have no access to formal banking or semiformal microfinance institutions according to a report by McKinsey. The report adds that nearly 2.2 billion of these unserved adults live in ...
Payments firm Cellulant has launched “Mula”, its relatively new payments service in Ghana in a move that will allow anyone pay for their the utility bills online, purchase airtime and pay for TV subscription services such as GOtv and DStv from their mobile phones. According to the firm, before the ...
The University of Cape Town (UCT) has become the first university in Africa to offer a degree in Fintech, allowing students to develop the requisite skills and knowledge needed to embrace technological advancements in the financial services sector. According to Business Insider, the new degree is a Master of Data Science ...
Barely a month after it launched its operations in Kenya, Belfrics Global is taking another bold step in the right direction. The company will be launching the Belrium ICO (Initial Coin Offering) which will allow anyone to become an early blockchain investor. An Initial Coin Offering is similar to an ...
When it comes to accessing loans from financial institution in Nigeria, it's never really easy. From too many processes, to strict requirements that many find hard to meet, and high interest rates. MOLI (Multi-versatile Open Loan Interface) was launched to bail you out. The platform is a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending marketplace for ...
Oxford University's Saïd Business School and South African e-learning company GetSmarter have launched an online FinTech programme to help meet the challenges of a rapidly changing financial services industry. The new digital open enrollment programme on financial technology and innovation was lanched with an aim to help executives launch new ...
Fenix International, a venture-backed pay-to-own home solar system technology and and financial services firm has raised funds from MTN, the Swedish Embassy in Zambia and USAID to launch pay-to-own solar home systems in Zambia. The funding together with MTN’s distribution networks will help the firm reach unbanked and off-grid customers ...
