Afridigest is your intelligent guide to Africa’s tech ecosystem. The Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what matters in African fintech.
On to the week’s highlights:
• It was a quiet week with no publicly announced fintech fundraises and a few notable acquisitions.
• News of the week: Some fintech stakeholders in Nigeria rejoiced as the country’s new President suspended its Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele. There’s a new breakdown of Africa’s total payment volumes. And money transfer unicorn Chipper Cash trimmed its workforce — again.
• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Expensya, Network International, Payflex, MinieMoney, Fiducia, Flutterwave, Chipper Cash, Lemfi, Awacash, & more.
• Executives appearing: MTN’s M. Mudassar Aqil, Tembo’s Reuben Mwatosya, Dinesurf’s Hauwa Ibrahim, Flutterwave’s Chinenye Agwu, Partech’s Tidjane Deme, Nestcoin’s Yele Bademosi, Remita’s Alisa Chinedu, & more.
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Week 23 2023: June 4-10
💸 Fundraises
No fintech fundraises were announced in Africa this week.
🤝🏽 Mergers & Acquisitions
Expensya, a Franco-Tunisian expense management platform, was acquired by Medius, a Swedish provider of accounts payable automation solutions for an undisclosed amount. The rumored ‘nine-figure’ transaction is said to be “one of the largest in the MENA region.”
The South African Competition Tribunal approved the acquisition of third-party payment processor Switchone (and airtime VAS provider Virtual Payment Solutions) by special purpose vehicle VCAP1.
📰 News of the Week
Three things: schadenfreude, an acquisition, and an exit from Africa.
SCHADENFREUDE
Nigeria’s President Tinubu suspended Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele — much to the pleasure of many fintech stakeholders in the country.
AN ACQUISITION
Week 16’s Fintech Review was titled ‘A huge acquisition on the horizon?’ And that acquisition is now here.
Network International (LSE:NETW), the largest payment processing firm across the Middle East and Africa, accepted a cash buyout offer from Canada's Brookfield Asset Management for $2.76B.
NETW processed ~$46B in payment volumes for over 150K merchants last year. And the company’s Board of Directors said it intends to unanimously recommend that shareholders vote for the deal.
If the deal, which implies a ~15.7 enterprise value/EBITDA multiple, goes through it’ll add to the limited set of public comps for African fintech valuations.
THE OTHER KIND OF AFRICA EXIT
In Week 35 2021, there was a lot of excitement in the BNPL space as Australia’s Zip entered Africa with the acquisition South Africa’s Payflex.
Now, two years later, Zip has quietly exited the continent, selling Payflex to an unknown buyer, divesting from other wholly owned businesses in Central and Eastern Europe, and winding down its Middle East business.
Why? To “focus on sustainable growth in [its] core markets” and “allocate resources to areas of [its] business that are either profitable or have a near and clear path to profitability.”
A sign of the times.
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