Afridigest Fintech Review: No paywall, but what's up with Payday?
Week 27 2023: July 2-8
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 fintech highlights:
• Two equity fundraises and two debt fundraises were announced this week.
• News of the week: Payday’s COO/Co-founder left the company. The e-Naira CBDC is now open for diaspora remittances. And Sino-Nigerian payments platform OPay started to monetize after years of free transfers.
• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Masroofi, Zuvy, Moove, Chapa, Brass, Woodcore, Qardy, Estafar, Mastercard, M-Pesa, & more.
• Executives appearing: Bank Zero’s Michael Jordaan, Paga’s Tayo Oviosu, MoMo PSB’s Eli Hini, Union 54’s Perseus Mlambo, DAI Magister’s Risana Zitha, Eclectics International’s Paul Mbuguah & Sebie Salim, Paystack’s Joel Bronkowski, Ukheshe’s Paul Selibas, Entersekt’s Praveksha Maharaj, Elevandi’s Sopnendu Mohanty, Lendsqr’s Adedeji Olowe, Spear Capital’s Martin Soderberg, Accion Venture Lab’s Jasiel Martin-Odoom, & more.
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Week 27 2023: July 2-8
📰 News of the WeekIt was a slow news week in African fintech if you let me tell it.
I celebrated July 4th with this email from Payday and didn’t think much of it:
But news announcements like this and this later in the week left me & others wondering what, if anything, is going on at Payday.
Could be nothing. Could be something. But it raises an eyebrow or two.
✨ There’s usually a paywall at this point with the rest of this newsletter only available to premium subscribers. But today’s edition is free for all readers in celebration of Gerald’s dirty thirty. 🥳🤸🏽💃🏾
If you’re not already a premium subscriber, today’s a good day to upgrade your subscription — don’t do it for me, do it for Gerald.✨
💸 Equity Fundraising DetailsMasroofi, an Egyptian e-wallet & financial education app targeting kids between 6 and 15 years old, raised a $1.5M seed round.
Zuvy, a Nigerian digital invoice factoring platform, raised $580K in equity as part of its seed round.
💸 Debt Fundraising DetailsMoove, a Nigerian 'mobility fintech' platform offering vehicle financing solutions primarily to ride-hailing drivers, secured $8M in debt financing.
Zuvy, a Nigerian invoice financing platform, raised $4M in debt financing as part of its seed round.
🚀 Partnerships & Product LaunchesPARTNERSHIPS
Ethiopian payments gateway Chapa announced a partnership with messaging platform Telegram. Chapa is among the first payment providers in Africa to integrate Telegram, and this collaboration means that Ethiopian consumers will be able to pay merchants without leaving the app.
Nigerian cloud banking infrastructure platform Woodcore announced a partnership with Uruguayan banking solutions software provider Bankingly. The companies will collaborate to offer holistic digital solutions to financial institutions in Africa.
Egyptian online lending marketplace Qardy announced a partnership with the country’s postal service Egypt Post. As a result, Qardy will provide its services to SMEs in Egypt Post’s network.
Shariah-compliant Somalian bank SomBank announced a partnership with Mastercard. The collaboration will see SomBank issue 100,000 Mastercard-branded debit cards to SomBank customers in 2023.
Egyptian digital insurance marketplace Estafsar announced a partnership with leading insurer Al-Wataniya Insurance. Al-Wataniya will leverage Estafsar’s tech platform for distribution.
Orange Bank Africa (OBA), Orange Group's digital bank, announced a partnership with the IFC. The IFC will provide a risk-sharing facility that’s specifically designed for digital loans to help OBA scale its digital lending operations to MSMEs in Ivory Coast first, then Senegal, then other parts of West Africa.
Kenyan telco Safaricom announced a partnership with East African Breweries PLC and Vivo Energy. The companies will launch mini-apps THE-BAR and SHELL CLUB Loyalty on the M-Pesa super app.
LAUNCHES
Nigerian digital healthcare platform WellaHealth launched digital wallet Healthsend. The hybrid healthcare/remittance product is designed to help individuals abroad contribute to the healthcare needs of friends & family on the continent.
Nigerian business banking platform Brass launched its payroll product. Who else is in the market? Click the image below to find out.
Remember, the Afridigest referral program is now live. And for a limited time, one successful referral gets you the link to one of my favorite websites. It’s a good one (if you like IPOs), and most people have never heard of it 🤗
📑 Reads of the WeekWORTH A LOOK: AFRICA
DAI Magister investment banker Risana Zitha writes ‘B2B payments set to be the next focus for VCs in Africa’
🙈 Visual of the weekEthiopia’s telecoms sector is liberalizing.
And that presents an opportunity for mobile money to help advance financial inclusion in the country.
But there’s much to be done since, as a nascent mobile money market, Ethiopia faces a wide variety of challenges, including limited consumer awareness.
👔 People MovesOgechi Yvonne Obike, Co-founder & COO at Payday stepped down.
📜 Other News, Reads, and MediaNEWS
South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) announced that all crypto exchanges in the country will be required to obtain licenses by the end of the year. With this, South Africa reportedly becomes the first country on the continent to require digital asset exchanges to be licensed.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) announced the introduction of its digital currency, the eNaira, as a payment option to recipients of diaspora remittances.
Nigerian payments platform OPay caps free transfers as economic realities set in.
MEDIA INTERVIEWS & REPORTS
Perseus Mlambo, Co-Founder & CEO, Union54, on the company's new social commerce platform ChitChat (TechCabal - article)
Eli Hini, CEO, MTN MoMo PSB, on MTN’s mobile money gameplan in Nigeria (Techpoint - article)
Tayo Oviosu, Co-Founder & CEO, Paga, on building the company for over a decade (African Startup Teardowns - podcast)
Paul Mbuguah and Sebie Salim, Co-founders, Eclectics International, on the origins of fintech in Africa (Ali talks tech - video)
Joel Bronkowski, South Africa country lead, Paystack, on the company’s Africa expansion plans (ITWeb - article)
Paul Selibas, President of Project Engineering, Ukheshe, on embedded finance in the age of e-commerce (iAfrica - article)
Praveksha Maharaj, Director of Partnerships MEA, Entersekt, on how digital innovation is unifying Africa’s Payments Landscape (Pymnts - video)
Yoseph Ayele, Web3 founder & investor, on why crypto needs Africa (The Flip Africa - video)
Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Chairman of the Board of Elevandi, on the Inclusive FinTech Forum in Rwanda and financial inclusion in Africa (Couchonomics - video)
OTHER READS
How mobile money is bringing electricity to the world’s poorest (Bloomberg)
Here’s why Latin American fintechs are expanding to Africa (TechCabal)
'Buy now, pay later' payment schemes are soaring in popularity in South Africa (News24)
The changing landscape of fintech consumer apps in Ghana (Technova)
Top 10 fintech apps in Nigeria by number of downloads as of June 2023 (Nairametrics)
The 8 top payment gateways for businesses in Nigeria (Techpoint)
Adedeji Olowe, Founder & CEO at Lendsqr writes ‘Without access to credit for everyone, Nigeria can't hit the growth it wants’
Martin Soderberg, managing partner at Spear Capital writes ‘Southern Africa's largely conservative banking sector makes private capital all the more vital’
🗣️ Opportunities 
Ghana-based Accion Venture Lab investor Jasiel Martin-Odoom is in Lagos this week and would love to meet fintech founders in Nigeria. He’s particularly interested in talking about fintech solutions in these areas: B2B payments infrastructure, cross-border payments, the future of work, gig/creator economies & jobtech, non-FMCG B2B marketplaces, and informal economy solutions. Get in touch with him on Twitter or ping me by email/Whatsapp.
EBANX is hiring a remote Product Specialist for Africa.
Early-stage African fintechs leveraging AI & ML are invited to apply before August 14th to the AWS Global Fintech Accelerator.
Fintechs promoting financial inclusion for women migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa and MENA markets are invited to apply to the Seedstars FIWAM (Financial Innovations for Women Affected by Migration) Growth Program.
🐤 Tweet of the Week Michael Jordaan, Co-Founder of South African digital bank Bank Zero, on how to think about Nigeria’s currency changes:
If you’re a free reader and you got this far, remember to upgrade your subscription & send a happy birthday note to Gerald.
MADE IN NIGERIA 🇳🇬 WITH 💚
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