Afridigest Fintech Review: Payday's paltry payday

Week 49 2023: Dec 3-9

Emeka Ajene

Dec 10, 2023

On to the week’s fintech highlights:

• Three fintech fundraises were announced this week.

• News of the week: Nigerian neobank Payday was acquired by Bitmama. Last year’s acquisition of Bluewave Insurance by Kenyan insurtech Lami didn’t actually happen & the deal is now dead. And TymeBank CEO Coen Jonker shared some figures: TymeBank is now valued at ~$965M, it has 8.3M customers, ~70% of whom are active on a 30-day basis, it’s acquiring ~200K customers a month, and it does ~23M transactions monthly.

• Companies appearing in today’s Fintech Review: Bitmama, Payday, TymeBank, Lami, Chapa, TerraPay, Kacha, ezra, Capi Money, Pezesha, Kippa, Bloc, Lidya, M-Kopa, YaYa, Flutterwave, and more.

• Executives appearing: FairMoney’s Laurin Nabuko Hainy, Flutterwave’s Olugbenga Agboola, TymeBank’s Coen Jonker, Paga’s Tayo Oviosu, Anthemis Capital’s Ruth Foxe Blader, 500 Global’s Mareme Dieng, EBANX’s Wiza Jalakazi & Juliana Etcheverry, AWS' Nilesh Dusane, BankServAfrica’s Ben Janse van Rensburg, Fu'ad Lawal, and more.

With that said, let’s get into it!

Note: Premium subscribers have exclusive access to the paid version of this Fintech Review which includes additional details on fintech fundraises, product launches, new partnerships announced, and other paywalled content. Become a premium subscriber for access:

Week 49 2023: Dec 3-9

Three fintech fundraises were announced across Africa this week.

Become a paid subscriber for access to comprehensive tracking of Africa Tech fundraising and M&A deals every week and more.

💸 Equity Deals

[Available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

📰 News of the Week

A surprise acquisition happened last week as Nigerian crypto exchange turned blockchain-based payments platform Bitmama bought Rwandan/Nigerian digital banking platform Payday.

If the reporting is correct, Bitmama paid $1M in equity — a perhaps lackluster outcome for the once high-flying neobank that raised over $4M since it was founded in mid-2021.

Payday had been a bit under fire lately, however.

Its co-founder & other senior team members left the company, whispers of lost faith in the company’s top leadership (before & after this report) seemed to be on the rise, and there seemed to be a surge in customer complaints, too.

So what’s in it for Bitmama?

Some 300,000 to 700,000 users, depending on whose numbers you believe.
Experienced talent.
And more juice for Changera, its cross-border payments product that’s in the middle of beefing up its B2B offerings.

(Changera offers virtual dollar cards, virtual USD, GBP, & EUR bank accounts, and currency conversion via its multi-currency wallet. Its parent company Bitmama is itself increasingly moving beyond crypto exchange services to enabling trade. )

Bitmama didn’t need to do this deal and it had most of the leverage here, as reflected in the (reported) purchase price.

And I imagine insiders view the acquisition as having asymmetric possibilities — no big deal if things don’t work out, but an absolute home run if the pieces fit together well.

Of course, not everyone agrees.

Time will tell, but congrats are now in order for all the parties involved. 🥳

But whatever you do, don’t call this deal (for a reported 3.33% stake in Bitmama) a merger…

Pair with: This behind-the-scenes discussion of another 2023 fintech M&A deal in Africa:

Behind the scenes of a Nigerian fintech M&A deal with Rise's Eke Urum

Emeka Ajene

October 11, 2023

Read full story

🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches

PARTNERSHIPS

Safaricom Ethiopia's M-Pesa and Ethiopian payment gateway Chapa announced a partnership that sees Chapa offer M-Pesa services on its platform.
[Additional partnership announcements available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

LAUNCHES

South Africa’s Bidvest Bank partnered with Mastercard to launch international remittance product, BidSend.
[Additional launch announcements available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

📑 Read of the Week

WORTH A LOOK: AFRICA

A Paystack friendship — A good read on Paystack’s culture and the company’s early days by Fu'ad Lawal.
[Additional recommendations available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

🙈 Visual of the week

Africa is proving to be an important battleground for global payments giants Visa and Mastercard.

According to Visa Executive Chairman & former CEO Alfred F. Kelly, Jr., the continent's “infrastructure has advanced” to the point where “Africa has finally started to make sense.”

And over the next decade, the continent is projected to be the fastest-growing fintech market worldwide.

So the two card network behemoths are investing billions of dollars to make sure they win as fintech in Africa comes of age.

Read how Visa and Mastercard are fighting for the future of fintech in Africa on the Afridigest Linkedin page.

*Source: Most Popular Credit Card By Country: Visa, Mastercard Or Amex (by Google Search data). MerchantMarchine.*

Follow the Afridigest Linkedin page

📜 Other News, Reads, and Media

NEWS

The acquisition (first announced in Week 5 2022) of Kenyan micro-insurance distribution platform Bluewave Insurance Agency by Kenyan API-driven insurance platform Lami has collapsed.
[Additional news highlights available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

EXPANSION & LICENSING NEWS

Nigerian payments unicorn Flutterwave acquired money transfer licenses for 13 US states. These licenses, in addition to an existing partnership with a licensed financial institution, increase the reach of Flutterwave’s products & services (like SendApp) to 29 states in the USA.
[Additional expansion & licensing highlights available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

MEDIA INTERVIEWS & REPORTS

Coen Jonker, Co-Founder & CEO of TymeBank, on the company’s traction to date and IPO plans. (Business Day - podcast - 27 mins)
[Additional media highlights available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

Become a paid subscriber to access sections of this newsletter that are available to paid subscribers only:

I want to upgrade my subscription

🐤 Tweets of the Week

[Available in the premium version of this newsletter.]

🗣️ Community Corner and Opportunities (Send to submissions@afridigest.com)

Nigerian credit-led neobank FairMoney is hiring a Director of International Expansion to lead the company’s acquisition of MFB licenses across the continent.