The Afridigest Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what happened in African fintech.
Hello again, friends! Remember: 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.)
📌 Happy Halloween, guys and ghouls 🎃 As far as weeks go, Week 43 was a relatively slow one for #AfricaTech in general, and for fintech in particular. Still, there were a number of worthwhile reads (both Africa-focused and Western-oriented) for fintech professionals — they’re compiled here for your convenience.
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On to this week’s highlights:
• Just two fintech deals announced — eerily quiet 👻
• South Africa’s Tyme is now truly a multi-country digital bank after the launch of its Philippine operations — #AfricaToTheWorld 🙌🏽
• Plus some very interesting reports on MTN Nigeria’s Payment Service Bank, Mastercard’s view on fintech in Africa, the state of Africa’s payment systems, and more.
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Week 43: October 23-29
💸 Fundraises
🇲🇦 Spotter, a Moroccan API platform helping businesses prevent check fraud, raised an undisclosed amount from UM6P Ventures.
🇳🇬 GIGX Technologies, a Nigerian wallet for spending, saving, and investing in crypto & other financial assets, was selected for the Techstars Toronto Winter ‘22 batch. (Techstars offers $20K in exchange for a 6% equity stake and an optional $100K convertible note.)
📰 News of the Week
Tyme, the digital banking group originating in South Africa, formally launched its Philippine operations, GoTyme. Tyme can now truly say it’s a multi-country digital banking operation — one with a focus on emerging markets across Africa and Asia. TymeBank, its South African flagship, has ~5.6M customers — 80% of whom created their accounts via agents/kiosks. And in the Philippines, GoTyme will use the same hybrid offline/online playbook — kiosks and human agents/ambassadors deployed in retail environments. Tyme’s partner in the Philippines is the Gokongwei Group, a diversified conglomerate owned by one of the Philippines’ wealthiest families. The Group operates one of the country’s largest omnichannel retailers, Robinsons, and GoTyme kiosks will (continue to) be deployed throughout its retail footprint in the months to come. That said, there are already early signs of success as GoTyme signed up ~15,000 Filipino customers in its first few days. What’s next for Tyme after South Africa and the Philippines? Pakistan apparently. ✈️🌐
Pair with:
PYMNTS Fireside Chat — with Coen Jonker, TymeBank Executive Chairman & Co-founder
To scale in African markets today, startups need to run hybrid strategies
🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches
NALA, a Tanzanian international money transfer platform that powers remittances from the UK and US to Africa, launched its Google Pay integration. As a result, NALA customers in the US and UK can pay-in with Google Pay and payout to over 300 banks and 20 mobile money players across Africa. Flutterwave announced its own Google Pay integration last month; so while NALA’s not first here, it’s among the few African fintechs with GPay integrations so far.
Mara, a pan-African crypto exchange platform,