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The Payment Systems and Services Act of 2019 (Act 987) provides the regulatory framework.  The Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2008 (Act 749), Data Protection Act of 2012 (Act 843), and Electronic Transactions Act of 2008 (Act 772) provide additional regulation.

A lot of business now is able to operate online to meet the 21st-century business-standard. Businesses operating online now are able to receive payments and make transactions without the need for operating physically like the old times.

A lot of business now is able to operate online to meet the 21st-century business-standard. Businesses operating online now are able to receive payments and make transactions without the need for operating physically like the old times.

MTN Ghana (Scancom PLC or MTNGH or the Company) delivered a strong performance for the year in a competitive industry, maintaining market leadership with 55.21% market share.

Payments provider Small World FS and Ghanaian mobile financial services aggregator Zeepay have struck a partnership to offer mobile money wallets in Ghana.

ZEEPAY, a wholly Ghanaian owned mobile financial services company focused on providing integrated mobile payments services with mobile wallets has announced that the company has partnered with Visa to allow Africans in the diaspora to directly send money onto Visa debit and prepaid cards in Ghana.

We empower individuals with access to credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. Carbon is headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria. We are a global company of over 90 employees with operations in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya

Carbon is a financial service provided by Carbon Finance & Investments Limited (RC 1044655), licensed and regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). We empower individuals with credit, simple payments solutions, high-yield investment opportunities, and easy-to-use tools for personal financial management. We are a global company of over 90 employees with a presence in Mauritius, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, South Africa, and Kenya.

This funding was secured from UK charity Shell Foundation, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), AV Ventures and Rabo Foundation. “This is a significant milestone for AgroCenta, having the support of leading institutions, particularly with the COVID-19 backdrop, underlining the strength of AgroCenta and the importance of its mission. The demand for agricultural raw materials from offtakers in the brewery, manufacturing and consumer sector is increasing exponentially because of the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions that were put in place by the government of Ghana, hence this capital injection will help to secure purchases at fair and transparent prices from smallholders — a much needed lifeline for many who are at the proverbial bottom of the pyramid”. Francis Obirikorang, AgroCenta’s CEO and Co-Founder Michael Ocansey said while highlighting the importance and criticality of this investment.

Enterprise Trustees Limited has launched a partnership with Agrocenta, a digital food distribution platform, to provide retirement solutions as a value addition to small holder farmers in Afram Plains of Ghana.Under the scheme, farmers will make voluntary personal pension contributions during the harvesting seasons from the sale of their produce to Agrocenta.  The benefits will include lump sum payouts, periodic withdrawals and a life insurance cover.Agrocenta currently works with about 46,000 farmers across several regions in Ghana. These farmers will be assisted by Agrocenta field officers to enroll onto the Pensions Scheme via a USSD shortcode at the community level. 

AgroCenta focuses on 3 key impact goals for Ghana:No Poverty: we are definitely improving the financial livelihood of smallholder farmers through fair trade. Many smallholder farmers are paid less than $1 a day and our objective is to increase it to $4 a day by 2020.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.

Created in 2015 in Cape Town by Andrew Watkins-Ball, the company, which specializes in savings, loans and insurance for people and small businesses far from the traditional banking system, has raised $55 million (50 million euro) in debt and venture capital from the American bank.

Created in 2015 in Cape Town by Andrew Watkins-Ball, the company, which specializes in savings, loans and insurance for people and small businesses far from the traditional banking system, has raised $55 million (50 million euro) in debt and venture capital from the American bank.

The company has raised nearly $146 million since its creation from renowned players such as Google, which integrated Jumo into its accelerator in May 2017, the Mastercard foundation, development institutions such as Finnfund and Proparco (the private branch of the French Development Agency).

JUMO builds its credit profiles using behavioral data gathered from mobile wallets, cell phones and transaction data.

JUMO is a transaction and predictive technology platform that partners with mobile network operators and banks to offer customers microloans and access to savings and insurance products. They are currently active in six markets – Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Pakistan – with plans to soon launch in India, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. JUMO has helped disburse over $1.6 billion in funding to small and micro enterprises, and has helped connect over 15 million people to credit and savings services.

AgroCenta is an agricultural technology platform that focuses on using technology to provide market access to smallholder farmers in Ghana. Their primary objective is to promote and facilitate fair trade for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa by connecting them directly to larger and structured markets. It thus connects them to large, medium and small businesses in order to sell to breweries, food manufacturers and processing industries without intermediaries. The different digital services the company provides in the fields are “Agro-Trade”, “Agro-Pay”, “Agro-Logistics” and “Agro-Information”. By improving the logistical process and removing exploitative buying from the value chain, smallholder farmers can sell at competitive prices and improve their financial livelihood.

AgroCenta brings all the stakeholders in Ghana’s agricultural value chain together to facilitate effective trading within its web and mobile platform. They target rural smallholder farmers and farmer-based organizations that have limited access to markets, logistics, or technology. AgroCenta works to improve the livelihoods of farmers by providing an all-in-one SMS based solution to access commodity pricing, offer goods for sale across Ghana, and an on-demand logistics service to ensure timely deliveries.

Business Model

“Common investor wisdom is to stay in your market and dominate. This assumes that you are expanding on your own but we believe that by collaborating and partnering deliberately, Carbon and other tech companies can scale faster and build more enduring platforms,” Chijioke Dozie, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder of Carbon, said. 

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.Consumer lending platform Carbon, which rebranded in April as parent company OneFi continues to transition into being a full digital banking platform after raising US$5 million in debt funding and acquiring Nigerian payments startup Amplify, has been busy expanding its offering, and has also moved into new markets with a Kenyan launch.Its “Disrupt fund” is the first of its kind by an African fintech startup, and will invest up to US$10,000 per startup for five per cent equity. Portfolio companies will also be given access to Carbon’s API, allowing them to leverage Carbon’s growing customer base and innovative technology platform to get to market faster. Carbon expects the initiative to spark more collaboration and further investment that should drive growth across the ecosystem, and is accepting applications from companies with operations in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Egypt. Startups looking to apply for the fund must have a functioning product, be post-revenue, and be looking to operate in multiple countries. The fund has a wide investment mandate but target sectors include insurance, health and education.“There are many excellent companies across the continent looking for the kind of scale Nigeria offers and we are excited to partner with them to provide the support and financial investment they need. We are equally excited to expand beyond Nigeria and Kenya by working with a new generation of innovators across the continent and sharing our experience to tackle common obstacles to growth.”

Nigerian fintech startup Carbon has set up a US$100,000 pan-African fund to address the lack of funding and support holding back entrepreneurs on the continent.

The Ghanaian unit of African telecommunication giant MTN Group Ltd. is petitioning the highest court to review a declaration that it is a significant market power. Failure could result in stricter regulation.

Most Ghanaians who use MTN have said that hours after the country’s largest mobile network operator introduced new data packages they were unable to purchase data bundles.

MTN Ghana has apologized to its customers who are facing challenges as they try to purchase data bundles.

MTN has experienced some challenges on some of our channels post-implementation of the adjustment of prices and our new data bundles.”

WorldRemit’s low fees and exchange rates are shown up-front and customers can send money easily via the company’s website and app. By extending its money transfer service to SMEs, WorldRemit will save businesses time and money when they make international payments.

Today, we’re pleased to extend that service offering to businesses, and put an end to the steep fees that many pay, especially when sending to Ghana. We’re committed to making it quick, safe and easy for you to pay individuals across borders, leaving you to focus on growing your own business.”

With Carbon, all loan requests, processes and payments are done via their android platform mobile app.You can borrow from as low as 5 cedis to as high as 1,000 cedis without the need to provide a collateral.All that is required of you as a loan applicant is your bio-data, your photograph, information about your employment and the loan amount you want.Once your loan has been reviewed and you pass the review process, your money is sent via the mobile wallet you applied with.

We have seen improvements in farmers’ livelihoods because we give them a fair price for the commodities they produce and help them with better farming practices so they increase their yields. Seeing farmers being able to pay school fees for their families has given us joy about what we do. Agriculture is the space we should be in. Before AgroCenta farmers were selling to middle men at sometimes ridiculously low prices for maize, for instance. At the time a middle man would buy a 50 kg bag of maize for US$9 (40 cedis) and we would buy it for US$11 (49 cedis). We deal mostly in maize, sorghum and soya beans and have a five year contract with a big organisation that has a constant demand for these commodities. In 2016 we sponsored 400 farmers, the majority of whom were women. We provided them with seed, fertilisers and tractor services. These farmers had an assured market. Everything they produced got purchased by us at prevailing market prices, enabling them sell quickly and earning higher.