Afridigest Fintech Review: "Payments in Africa are 1% built"

Week 51 2022: December 18-24

The Afridigest Fintech Review is a weekly recap of what happened in African fintech.

Hello again, friends! Remember: this Fintech Review normally goes out on Sundays, and the regular Week in Review normally goes out on Mondays. But it wasn’t a normal week — today’s newsletter is late thanks to the holidays. 🎅 That said, hope you had a great Christmas 🎅

On to the week’s highlights:

• Week 51—in the thick of the holiday period—was another quiet one for Africa-focused fintech, but ~$1.75M was announced across two deals.

• Besides that, some interesting updates came from governmental bodies in the Central African Republic and Nigeria.

• Companies mentioned in today’s Fintech Review include Nigeria’s RiseVest, Egypt’s Fawry, Kenya’s Lami, Senegal’s Wave, and Nigeria’s Scalex.

• Executives mentioned include Mastercard’s Adam Jones, Cellulant’s Sike Bamisebi, Asante Financial Services Group’s Chidi Okpala, Scalex’s Nnaemeka Nwosu, Quidax’s Buchi Okoro, Luno’s Marius Reitz, Emtech’s Tunji Odumuboni, Paystack’s Nubi Kayode, Tochukwu Ironsi, and 'Tunrie Bisi-Afolabi.

⭐ Not interested in fintech? No problem: visit the Notifications section on your Account Settings page and deselect the Fintech option. (And if you speak French, make sure to turn notifications on for Afridigest Français — it’ll come back from hiatus soon.)

[If you’re not a paying subscriber of Afridigest, you’ll only see a free preview of this Fintech Review. Remember to upgrade your subscription or start a trial to read it in full — it’s recommended by and for fintech professionals & investors. Check out previous, non-paywalled versions here, here, and here.]

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Week 51 2022: December 18-24

-💸 Fundraises

AFRICA

• 🇿🇦 Centbee, a South African/British blockchain-enabled digital payments platform, raised a ~$1M (ZAR17M) pre-Series A round.

• 🇬🇭 BezoMoney, a Ghanaian personal & group savings platform, raised $750K.

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🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches

LAUNCHES

Billion. @eldivyn

Our goal is to grow the wealth and value in our private markets and unlock it for everyone. You can login with your @Risevest details or sign up directly on Assetbase. For now, our waitlist is up at assetbase.capital and our private beta will launch soon. THANK YOU 🚀🚀🚀

assetbase.capitalThe alternative exchange for private investmentsAssetbase offers a selection of highly vetted private investment opportunities that were previously only available to institutions and the ultra wealthy

• Nigerian wealthtech platform RiseVest announced the (waitlist) launch of alternative investments marketplace AssetBase.

PARTNERSHIPS

• Egyptian fintech platform Fawry announced a partnership with MENA edtech platform Classera. The partnership will see Fawry provide digital payment services to Classera customers via its 300K POS machines, the myfawry app, and FawryPlus branches across Egypt.