Afridigest Fintech Review: A $13 million seed round for a Consumer + B2B financial ecosystem
Week 36: September 4-10
The Afridigest Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what happened in African fintech.
Hello again, friends! To recap, here’s the tentative publishing plan: this Fintech Review goes out on Sundays, the regular Week in Review goes out on Mondays, and the French-language Revue de la Semaine goes out on Wednesdays. Assuming no delays, of course. Send me your feedback here: Whatsapp, Twitter, and email. And help me share & spread the word about this Fintech Review. 🙏🏽
📢 If you’re interested in investing in Africa Tech or reached out to me in the past about this, please share your contact info with me here ⋘
On to this week’s highlights:
• Two fintech deals announced for ~$15M in disclosed equity funding, plus an interesting look at Africa’s largest banks in the visual of the week.
• McKinsey followed up its must-read Fintech in Africa report with a high-quality look at the Future of Payments in Africa.
• The two-year-old Cellulant CEO saga came to an end with no findings of financial misconduct or personal impropriety.
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Week 36: September 4-10
💸 Fundraises🇳🇬 NowNow, a Nigerian digital banking platform, raised a $13M seed round led by NeoVision Ventures. The company offers agency banking services via a network of ~50,000 agents across Nigeria, consumer-facing services accessible via smartphones and feature phones, integrated business-in-a-box solutions for SMEs, and BaaS, embedded finance, & white-label financial solutions for fintechs and financial institutions. The company says it’s on pace to process $5 billion in GMV across all platforms by the end of this year.
🇳🇬 Bitmama, a Nigerian blockchain payments platform, raised a $1.65M pre-seed extension round co-led by Unicorn Growth Capital and Launch Africa. In addition to a traditional crypto exchange, the company offers a stablecoin-driven remittance & money transfer platform (Changera) and virtual crypto debit cards, funded with stablecoins.
💰 Venture Funds🇪🇬 Endure Capital announced the first close of a targeted $50M fund second fund, Endure 21. Its fintech portfolio includes Thndr, NowPay, and Tribal.
🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches
Eyowo, a Nigerian digital bank, launched its Better Card product after meeting Mastercard’s certification requirements. Customers receive both a digital card whose 16-digit card number and expiration date are stored in Eyowo’s app and a physical card with no sensitive information.
Canadian neobank Be Mobile Africa announced its official launch in South Africa. The company says it’s “currently available in 30 African countries” but that doesn’t seem right — for one, they have less than 5,000 Play Store downloads. But have you come across these guys, dear reader?
Cudium, a Nigerian cross-border payments & currency swapping platform, launched to the public. It was founded by students of Obafemi Awolowo University whose alumni include founders of some notable Nigerian startups like Jobberman, Nairaland, and Cowrywise.
📰 News of the WeekKippa received a Super-Agent banking license from the Central Bank of Nigeria. According to Co-Founder & CEO Kennedy Ekezie, “[This] allows us to truly empower all our customers with tools, and infrastructure to not just accept payments, but to start to offer financial services to their end customers, [affording] us the opportunity to implement integration with the national switches and allows us to provide business-to-business and platform and services to other fintechs.”
Nigeria is in talks with Binance to establish a special economic zone aimed at supporting crypto and blockchain-related businesses. The Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), the government agency that licenses, regulates, and operates free trade zones, announced that it’s in discussions with Binance and Talent City to establish a crypto-friendly economic zone.
NEPZA in discussions on partnership with Binance and Talent City for the first Virtual Free Zone in West Africa similar to the Dubai Virtual Free Zone. At Preliminary meetings in Dubai this week are Nadeem Ladki (Binance Executive Director-Regional Strategic Partnerships).
The development is noteworthy given Nigeria’s skeptical stance towards crypto historically.
🙈 Visual of the weekAfrica’s largest banks by revenue are concentrated in South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and to a lesser degree, Morocco.
In general, the financial services industry accounts for ~20% of the 600 or so companies across the continent with annual revenues over $500M; it’s the leading sector among Africa’s highest-earning companies.
It’s no surprise, then, that fintech leads VC funding on the continent. And with large swathes of the population unbanked, underbanked, and underserved, there remain myriad opportunities for banks and fintechs to compete and/or collaborate.
📑 Read of the WeekThe future of payments in Africa. Interesting trends & themes highlighted in this McKinsey’s latest piece on fintech in Africa — this time with a focus on payments. “Although cash is still king in Africa, … its supremacy is likely to be challenged in the coming years as e-payments gain momentum.”
👔 People MovesJeremy Awori was appointed Group CEO of Pan-African banking conglomerate Ecobank. Formerly CEO of Absa Bank Kenya, he will now lead Ecobank’s operations in 36 countries across the continent.
Sherif Abdou was appointed Managing Director of Egypt’s ZealPay after 18 years at Vodafone where he most recently served as Head of Commercial Operations for Vodafone Cash e-wallets
Dr. Reda Helal (formerly Group Chief Sales Officer for Processing) was appointed Group Managing Director of Network International’s Africa Processing business
Heba Hakky (formerly Country Advisor) was appointed Egypt Managing Director of MENA P2P lending platform liwwa
Henry Obiekea (formerly VP of Capital Markets) was appointed Nigeria Managing Director of credit-led neobank FairMoney
Omo Ojeomogha was appointed Director of Engineering at Wave after three years in engineering management at Stripe
📜 Other News, Reads, and MediaNEWS
Cellulant has ended its two-year-old internal investigation of former CEO Bolaji Akinboro with no findings of financial misconduct or personal impropriety.
Binance temporarily removed fees on South African Rand (ZAR) deposits on its recently launched its fiat gateway in the country.
VIDEO
Coen Jonker, Executive Chairman and Co-founder, Tyme Bank (Pymnts)
Walid Hassouna, Founder & CEO, ValU (Couchonomics)
Chris Maurice, Founder & CEO, Yellow Card (CNBC Africa)
Dakshesh Patel, CEO of Zympay and CFO of Tingo, (Southern African Times)
Eerik Oja, Co-Founder & CEO of Planet42 (Pymnts)
OTHER READS
Foundations for successful fintech infrastructure (and several tradeoffs to consider) (a16z)
SA telcos use fintech to tap into lending market (Connecting Africa)
Francophone Africa’s first unicorn is disrupting the region’s mobile money market. But can it last? (Rest of World)
Fintech apps in Tunisia are giving traditional banks a run for their money (Kasi)
Here are laws governing FinTech companies in Nigeria (Nairametrics)
KPMG predicts boom in African fintech investments (IT Web)
🐤 Tweets of the WeekSome interesting thoughts on financial inclusion:
Samora Kariuki @SamoraKariuki
We focus on the wrong financial inclusion. More store of value wallets or accounts won't help the continent. We need more access to credit, insurance, high yield savings, pensions and wealth tools.An invitation to learn lessons in loyalty from Shoprite SA:
A reaction to a bank’s use of emojis 🤭:
🗣️ Community Corner and Opportunities (feel free to send yours in)Applications are now being accepted until September 15th for the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT)’s Catapult: Inclusion Africa Program — it’s an all-expenses-paid, week-long boot camp for African fintechs that want to forge connections between Africa and Europe
Applications are now open until September 16th for the 2022 Ecobank Fintech Challenge — Africa-centered fintechs are eligible to win a $50,000 cash prize & more
Visa is hiring an Abidjan-based Business Development Analyst, Western & Central Africa
Mastercard is hiring a Joburg-based Director of Product Management
MADE IN NIGERIA 🇳🇬 WITH 💚
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