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Customers who sign up for the M-Pesa service can convert between e-cash and real cash (these are called cash-in / cash-out transactions), and can transfer e-cash from their account to that of another account holder via SMS. Cash-in / cash-out operations take place at one of many designated M-Pesa retail outlets, also known as “agents”. These agents are not employed by Safaricom, but are simply retailers / regular businessmen and women that are ‘authorized’ to trade e-cash for real cash.

Although some of M-Pesa’s initial success could be attributed to a uniquely favorable context for mobile-payments (strong customer need, welcoming regulatory environment, support from banks, strong brand awareness of Safaricom), its rapid and sustained growth was only possible due to a thoughtful operating model design, particularly regarding M-Pesa’s “agent network.”

Revenue from transaction fees that Safaricom collects via the agent during cash withdrawal operations and transfer operations (depositing money into mobile wallet is free). Reduce Safaricom customers’ churn, improve engagement, lifetime value etc.

AgroTrade : Which is a sales platform that connects smallholder farmer directly to a larger market to trade fairly. AgroTrade matches smallholder farmers in rural areas to small, medium and large buyers in the urban areas.

Francis Obirikorang is the CEO/Co-founder of AgroCenta and Michael Ocansey is the CTO/Co-founder of AgroCenta. Francis and Michael are both ex-employees of Esoko, one of the largest market information platforms in Africa for smallholder farmers.

AgroPay is the financial inclusion platform for smallholder farmers where farmers in rural areas, without bank accounts, receive payments for goods and services via mobile money technologies.

AgroCenta provides the “last mile” approach for the smallholder farmers, going a step further to help farmers sell competitively after the get market information only from existing e-agriculture products on the market.

AgroCenta focuses on 3 key impact goals for Ghana:No Poverty: Gender Equality: in Sub-Saharan Africa, traditions and land ownerships do not favor women, which ends up in many women being excluded from the agriculture value chain. By engaging the relevant stakeholders, AgroCenta rents arable agricultural lands to female smallholder farmers for free. Women are also given seeds, fertilizers, mechanized tractor services and extensive advisory information on farming best practices such as what type of seed to plant, when to plant, how to plant, etc.Decent Work & Economic Growth: we empower smallholder farmers to see agriculture as more than just a way to survive and position it as a viable industry that can be sustainable for their family.

Seedstars Summit has been phenomenal. It has put AgroCenta on a pedestal and in the spotlight of a huge community in Africa. The experience after the Summit has been amazing: we received a lot of proposals from potential investors, partners and other service providers keen on working with us for growth and expansion.

Winning the vote of the entire jury, AgroCenta from Ghana was crowned the Seedstars Global Winner of the 5th edition of Seedstars Summit. At Seedstars, we are convinced that AgroCenta will shape the future of AgriTech in Africa. Indeed, the start-up’s mission is to improve the financial livelihood of smallholder farmers through fair trade.

AgroCenta focuses as well as Seedstars on achieving the Sustainable Goals set up by the UN

Gender Equality: in Sub-Saharan Africa, traditions and land ownerships do not favor women, which ends up in many women being excluded from the agriculture value chain. By engaging the relevant stakeholders, AgroCenta rents arable agricultural lands to female smallholder farmers for free. Women are also given seeds, fertilizers, mechanized tractor services and extensive advisory information on farming best practices such as what type of seed to plant, when to plant, how to plant, etc.Decent Work & Economic Growth: we empower smallholder farmers to see agriculture as more than just a way to survive and position it as a viable industry that can be sustainable for their family.

A great team for sure! Our major strength has been a team made of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences and a deep understanding of the agricultural value chain. This asset allowed us to save a lot of time we would have naturally spent on trying to fine tune and launch the AgroCenta platform. Thanks to that we avoided making the common mistakes many new and unexperienced founders make.

The National Bank of Egypt is looking to buy stakes in Aman, Raya Holding for Financial Investments’ e-payment subsidiary, which was planned to IPO in three years, the local business newspaper Al Mal reported in 2019. MM Group for Industry & International Trade SAE is also planning to begin procedures to list non-banking investments firm Ebtikar next year, according to Daily News Egypt.

f your downside potential from disruptive threats. Incumbents can choose to invest in companies they partner with or to focus on areas they know well or interesting adjacencies. We frequently advise clients to find ways of keeping corporate venture-capital groups slightly at arm’s length to attract skilled managers, and we recently have seen increased interest in investing in established outside managers who focus on financial technology. Transform yourself to be more like a fintech. Digital transformation is a difficult but necessary process for most incumbent financial institutions. Redesigning core infrastructure to be more modular and dynamic, driving a new agile operating model, and upgrading technology and workforce skills are all necessary to compete with outside threats, fintech and otherwise. Build your own (internal) fintech. The road for transformations is normally measured in years, but the competitive threat from fintechs is today. Increasingly, we are seeing financial institutions try to beat fintechs at their own game or self-disrupt areas of their business before others can. The key to success in new digital business building is to combine the agility, speed, and talent of a start-up with the “unfair advantage” of an incumbent by leveraging existing assets (e.g. customers, distribution, or infrastructure). Serve the fintechs. A few financial institutions can find their competitive advantage in creating scaled, efficient technology and operations to enable others to embed financial services in their customer experiences. This “banking as a service” business model depends on finding a profitable path to white labeling but draws on the inspiration of large tech platforms. Enabling the customer experiences of others has quickly moved beyond just enabling fintechs to also working with big technology companies, retailers, telecommunications companies, and beyond. Ignore fintechs. Although ignoring the competition is rarely the right choice, some businesses are built on moats—frequently regulatory—that are difficult to disrupt or they play within narrow markets. Companies should prioritize where they need to focus and in doing so know when they need to pay attention and when they need to avoid the distraction of disrupters.

Financial-technology companies are changing the face of finance. Over the past ten years, what started mostly as disruption in the payments space has expanded to every corner of finance. Even areas once assumed to be safe are seeing new entrants and competitive threats. Wealth and asset management, wholesale banking, capital markets, regulation and risk (“regtech”), and trade finance are just the most recent areas to see innovation driven by small technology-first players.

Share7KTweetShareWhatsAppEmail7K SharesEgyptian electronic payments company Fawry now has a market cap of over $1 billion. It achieved the feat during the intraday trading, with its share price rising to EGP 22.69 which gives it a market cap of EGP 16 billion or $1 billion (for the first time). With this, Fawry has become the first technology company in Egypt to get to the billion-dollar valuation.

Egyptian electronic payments company Fawry now has a market cap of over $1 billion. It achieved the feat during the intraday trading, with its share price rising to EGP 22.69 which gives it a market cap of EGP 16 billion or $1 billion (for the first time). With this, Fawry has become the first technology company in Egypt to get to the billion-dollar valuation.

Its revenue for the first half of 2020 has increased by 47 percent (year-on-year) to EGP 549.26 million ($34.41 million) from EGP 373.33 million ($23.38 million) for the same period of 2019. The net profit of the company in H1 2020 has increased by over 135 percent YoY to EGP 85.9 million ($5.38 million) from EGP 36.47 million ($2.29) in H1 2019.

Its stock price has increased by over 300 percent since its debut at The Egyptian Exchange in August last year. It had gone public with its shares priced at EGP 6.46 (per share).

Egypt's Fawry is now a billion-dollar company

Its stock price has increased by over 300 percent since its debut at The Egyptian Exchange in August last year. It had gone public with its shares priced at EGP 6.46 (per share).

Its revenue for the first half of 2020 has increased by 47 percent (year-on-year) to EGP 549.26 million ($34.41 million) from EGP 373.33 million ($23.38 million) for the same period of 2019. The net profit of the company in H1 2020 has increased by over 135 percent YoY to EGP 85.9 million ($5.38 million) from EGP 36.47 million ($2.29) in H1 2019.

SimbaPay transfers funds to 11 countries — nine in Africa then to China and India. “Early next year we’ll increase this to 29 countries,” said Sagini. This includes offering the WeChat China payment service elsewhere in East Africa.

SimbaPay and Family Bank will generate revenues on the WeChat-based transfer service through a fee share arrangement on transactions. “We have a sliding scale of charges [for the service]. For example, to send the equivalent of $80 will cost $3.50,” said Sagini.This presents a significant reduction of fees and opportunity cost for Kenyan traders who import from China, according to Sagini and Family Bank.Current available payment methods to China for Kenyan businesses are less secure and more expensive options, such as traditional money transmitters (Western Union), SWIFT and off the grid services, according to Sagini and Family Bank Chief Operation Officer (COO) Godfrey Kamau Kariuki.

SimbaPay and Family Bank estimate over seven million customers and businesses will be able to access their China WeChat payment service, based on projections of Kenya’s current SMEs.

SimbaPay and Family Bank will generate revenues on the WeChat-based transfer service through a fee share arrangement on transactions. “We have a sliding scale of charges [for the service]. For example, to send the equivalent of $80 will cost $3.50,” said Sagini.