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Flutterwave and Simbapay are shining examples of this recent development. With Mergims, Sawapay and Sendwave in their back chasing them.

Founded by Nyasinga Onyancha, Simbapay is in London and caters to Kenyan and Nigerian recipients.Countries that can use the service include; the UK, Ireland, Italy, Spain, France and Germany.The platform allows money transfer to a bank account and mobile wallet like M-pesa, Paga or Airtel Money.

application was utilized for the cultivation of livelihood strategies. Such strategies helped residents to cope with (temporarily adjust) and recover from (longer-term shifts in livelihood strategies) stresses and shocks. It will also explain the outcomes resulting from these strategies. I

Safaricom is still extremely dominant when it comes to Kenya's mobile money market, with almost 99% market share

WorldRemit, on the other hand, partners with local banks and mobile networks; in Kenya, for example, it is working with electronic wallet service M-Pesa, so that money can be transferred instantly to all customers. The recipient can retrieve the funds as a bank deposit into a local WorldRemit bank account, as mobile money, airtime top-up or as cash at a supermarket. The fees are two to three per cent lower than those charged by most banks. WorldRemit’s closest rival is Remitly, another digital-only company that specialises in sending money from developed countries to the developing world.

If you look at mobile payments specifically, Africa is actually one of the leaders in this space.Kobus Ehlers, SnapScan, co-founderMeanwhile, Africa's smartphone market is expected to double over the following four years -- at the moment, South Africa is reportedly the biggest smartphone market in sub-Saharan Africa, with a 19% penetration.And as smartphones increase, the paying methods are also becoming smarter."If you look at mobile payments specifically, Africa is actually one of the leaders in this space," says Kobus Ehlers, co-founder of the SnapScan app. "SnapScan was developed in South Africa for the African market, so we try to find really local and relevant solutions and I think it's going to get a massive uptake," he adds.

Using your phone to pay for goods and services is nothing new in Africa, a continent where there are more than 720 million mobile phones. Services such as M-Pesa, the revolutionary Kenyan mobile payment system that allows people to bypass banks and pay bills, withdraw salaries and transfer cash electronically, have transformed the way people and business operate.

SimbaPay is a UK-based digital money transfer service serving Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Ghana that delivers money via existing mobile money wallet services and using its SimbaPay app. Simbapay and Kenya’s Family Bank recently launched an instant payment service from East Africa to China. Users can send funds to China through Family Bank’s PesaPap app or Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

Founded in 2009, Paga offers digital bank services (peer-to-peer money transfer, bill payments, online payments, and payroll), achieving a wide reach in Nigeria.

Financial intermediation and financial inclusion in sub-Saharan Africa remain low, despite progress in recent years. Helped by reforms, the depth and coverage of financial systems in sub-Saharan Africa—as measured by the standard indicators of financial development, such as the ratios of private sector credit to GDP and broad money to GDP—have significantly improved over the period 1995 to 2013 (Kasekende 2010). However, on average, countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to have a shallower financial system than those in other developing regions of the world (Figure 1). In terms of financial inclusion, only 20 percent of the population has a bank account compared to 92 percent in advanced economies and 38 percent in nonadvanced economies (Table 1). Underinvestment, poor infrastructure, and comparatively low levels of financial literacy have contributed to the region being underbanked.

Mobile money transfer platform Mpesa has been voted Kenya’s leading superbrand.In a survey carried out by top urban consumers and undertaken by Kantar TNS in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, leading telecommunications firm Safaricom, which owns the MPESA brand, came in second.It is the fourth year on the trot that MPESA has won this accolade, coming at a time the Covid-19 pandemic has hit the country’s economy.

The policies or “smart contracts” currently under development are based on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. This avoids the need for paperwork and means payouts can be triggered automatically when certain conditions are met, such as a specific number of days of drought. The system uses high-resolution satellite images to detect rainfall and plant growth data.Conventional crop insurance is too expensive for more than 500m small farmers worldwide, says Christopher Sheehan, founder and chief executive of US-based WorldCover, which developed the system. “But with machine learning and blockchain technology, we can process these data very cheaply to produce a really simple crop insurance product with premiums of $20 to $50 for a farmer who might only be earning $3,000 a year.” Payments can be made using mobile money transfer services such as M-Pesa.

Across the globe, smallholder farmers lose between $50 billion and $100 billion annually, often from natural disasters, but reportedly only 1% is insured from these accidents. As an example, in Feburary 2019, the company made several payouts to farmers in Kenya as poor rainfall caused large amount of crop failure.

Jason Schapiro, WorldCover Lead Engineer, said “Our algorithms are specifically calibrated to rainfall events by region and crop type, automatically triggering instant payouts to insured farmers through mobile money services like M-Pesa.”

This is not the first cross border transfer initiative by SimbaPay. The London-based company supports more cost-effective and efficient transfer of funds across Africa and Asia (11 countries – 9 African, 2 Asian). These are Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ghana, Madagascar, Niger, India and now China.

SimbaPay developed a third-party payment aggregator that enables funds delivery between Kenyan merchants and their largest source of imports, China. Through SimbaPay’s international money transfer service, merchants and individuals in Kenya would be able to send money to China’s WeChat Pay users from Family Bank’s PesaPap mobile banking application. This can be achieved through M-Pesa and a USSD service

The early-stage fintechs in the Inclusive Fintech 50 sample are increasing their use of digital acquisition channels, such as Facebook, to market their products. Qualitative findings point to an increased use of targeted social media campaigns, webinars, and other online marketing strategies such as email campaigns or WhatsApp chat room for clients — indicating that these channels are cheaper than TV and print media and likely more effective.

No other mobile money service has been able to successfully challenge Safaricom’s dominance, but not from a lack of trying. The most recent attempt comes with the announcement of a merger between Airtel and Telkom, two of Safaricom’s major rivals. The companies unsuccessfully attempted a merger last year, but recently created a joint venture called Airtel-Telkom.

Big DataIn addition to traditional financial data collection, new data sources such as mobile banking and the Internet of Things (IoT) provide an additional layer of data gathering. Combined with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data analytics utilize large amounts of old and new data to discover hidden patterns for better risk management and fraud detection. New insights from big data improve the understanding of customer behaviors and help banks to create better and more customized products and services.

AI helps banks to analyze their Big Data to improve existing solutions and make better decisions. A more recent AI trend is to use its cognitive abilities to go through a large amount of unstructured text and data to generate more insights and to learn natural language. A more intelligent AI chatbot or virtual assistant can take over repetitive “low-value” operations, such as performing small amount transactions, explaining financial products and providing basic financial advice to customers.

Because robo advisors are meant to be more cost-effective, they work to cover less various target client segment. Even if your investment is under $1,000, the machine analyzes all the opportunities on the market, develops reports and provides the most efficient and profitable way to grow your ROI.