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Operating in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan, the fintech plans to expand its offering and service to Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. 

We’re optimistic about the possibilities in these markets and continue to see huge growth opportunities in Africa, with the potential to replicate our successes in other markets over the longer term.”

Since 2017, AgroCenta has successfully completed two rounds of funding to the tune of $750,000 to expand operations in Ghana. In 2017, AgroCenta won the Seedstars Global Competition against other 72 startups from emerging markets across the globe. AgroCenta has grown its farmer base to 45,000 providing additional services of access to finance for smallholder farmers, bringing smallholder farmers onto the financial sector to enjoy services such as crop insurance, micro lending/input financing, mobile payments through mobile money and finally pensions schemes targeted at farmers and beneficiaries in the informal sector with special attention to women and youth. Since 2017, AgroCenta has helped over 28,000 farmers sell over 20,000MT of commodities to large, medium and small scale buyers across the country.   In December 2018, AgroCenta won a grant of $250,000 from GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Fund to further build its financial inclusion platform AgroPay targeted at rural smallholder farmers.

With the booming economy and a population of 80 million this country could be the next gold mine for mobile banking companies.

Kiva utilizes an innovative peer-to-peer crowdlending platform to enable budding entrepreneurs across the globe to access the funds they need to help themselves out of poverty. Kiva, founded in 2005, was one of the first non-profit platforms developed to enable “crowdlending” of loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries unable to access credit in more formal manners. Kiva’s innovative model of using the internet to enable peer-to-peer transactions has largely been successful to date. Over 1.3M individuals have lent to over 1.7M entrepreneurs around the world, with a total of almost 1M loans amounting to $773M.

Anlesinya et al (2014)16 examined whether corporate social responsibility has significant positive effect on the financial performance of MTN Ghana Limited. The study administered questionnaire on 35 management staff of MTN Ghana Limited, employed standard multiple regression and hierarchical multiple regression for the analysis. The research results showed that CSR at the aggregate level did not have significant positive effect on financial performance but community CSR has a positive while environmental CSR has negative effect on financial performance of MTN Ghana Limited. The study however has left key performance indicators of MTN Ghana unexplored lending support for a more comprehensive study in that regard. Vadiraj and Narahari (2014)1 attempted to develop a model that could predict the future trends of average revenue per user (ARPU) so that telecom service providers could formulate a strategy to increase their ARPU. The study using a multiple linear regression has been able to explain that subscriber base; number of operators and percentage of new users added periodically are the main determinants of average revenue per user (ARPU). Rahul and Xue (2012)17 attempted to examine the relationship between some selected factors and their contribution to the revenue of the Telecom industries in China and India. Using time series data collected from secondary sources from 2000 to 2010 on number of subscribers, technology innovation, and government regulation and policies, their granger causality test found no causality running from number of subscribers to the revenue of the telecom Industry in both China and India. They however found a causality running from technological innovation to the revenue of the Telecom Industries in both countries. Shmelev (2013)18 developed a model for calculating Telecom Company’s revenue and margin indicators. The study crafted the model for calculating the revenue of Telecom companies based on the Business Metric Framework (BMF) developed by the TeleManagement Forum, a global non-profit association for service providers in the Telecommunication sector. Examining the relationship between the two categories of KPIs in the BMF, the study concluded that it is possible to  create a function depending on the target KPIs lower levels, to calculate the final financial indicator at given rates and obtain a performance management  tool based on key performance indicators.  

Kiva is a non-profit lending platform well known for its microloan service targeted underserved markets globally. Lendio states that the program has now provided over $500,000 in microloans to business owners worldwide, 98% of whom are female. Lendio first launched the program in 2016. The company describes the program as part of its commitment to entrepreneurship and inclusivity. Lendio provides a microloan to a low-income entrepreneur for every new loan facilitated on its marketplace platform. This voluntary employee-contributed, employer-matched program reports a 94% participation rate among Lendio employees.

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.

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.

Whether fintechs ultimately win or lose significant market share may be beside the point; they are redefining customer expectations and continue to create new business models. As fintechs are frequently building their entire technology stacks from the ground up, they are highlighting incumbent financial institutions’ weaknesses not only in digital user experiences but also in operational efficiency. Whether a new digital brokerage wins or loses may not matter when customer expectations around brokerage fees change. A retail foreign-exchange fintech having 5 or 50 percent of the market may matter less than retail FX margins disappearing for everyone. Whether the next crops of “neobanks” disrupt retail banking may be less important than their highlighting for users and customers the possibilities of a modern, digital-first experience.

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.

Capitec has added share trading to its portfolio after entering into a partnership with low-cost investment platform EasyEquities. The move, which was announced on Friday, could be seen as a sign that Capitec wants to be able to satisfy the diverse requirements of more upper-income clients for broader financial services. The company has traditionally used no-frills bank accounts to attract budget-savvy low- to middle-class banking clients. ..

Capitec partners with EasyEquities to offer share trading in SA and US The move is part of a broader strategy to provide diverse financial services through a partnership network

Most smallholder Kenyan farmers are excluded from the financial system because they do not have a satisfactory credit profile. Without access to formal credit systems, they use alternative systems providing credit at high-interest rates, which, in addition, are not well suited to support their farm and off-farm activities.Having done this, the FarmDrive team met banks and organisations financing smallholder farmers to better understand the reasons for exclusion. They discovered that it is often the lack of information that locks farmers out of the financial system. They decided to try to fill this gap by collecting information from farmers, and analysing the data obtained, establishing their credit profile. Once this is done, farmers can apply for a loan via the platform FarmDrive.

African smallholder farmers face a recurring problem of access to finance and credit. Financial institutions, for their part, do not have access to many potential customers, considered as too risky. Young Kenyan computer scientists have developed FarmDrive, an application that aims to promote access to credit and financial services for smallholder farmers. banks remain to be won over, but the project is on track.

It became clear that fintech companies began to prize crowdfunding three years ago. Monzo crashed our servers in 2016 when it raised £1m in 96 seconds. Last December, the now-serial crowdfunding neobank raised £20m from retail investors. 

The world’s leading fintechs are using crowdfunding to cement and enhance their relationship with their customers. The latest Unicorns report from Beauhurst, an independent analysis firm, identifies the UK’s 21 unicorn companies – those worth $1bn (around £760m) or more. Of the 21, six are fintechs, and two are digital banks: Monzo and Revolut. Both have turned to crowdfunding – at a time when they are the darlings of the tech scene and its investors – to raise capital. 

CAIRO (Reuters) - The initial public offering for Egyptian digital payments company Fawry was oversubscribed by 30.3 times at a price of 6.46 Egyptian pounds (39 U.S. cents), data from the Egyptian stock exchange showed on Monday.

Fawry plans to list 36% of its share capital, worth up to 1.6 billion Egyptian pounds ($97 million), in the flotation.It said Actis, Banque Misr and National Bank of Egypt would each be offered about 7% of the stock, and 5% would be offered to retail investors.A private placing representing the remaining 10% of the share capital was 15.9 times oversubscribed, raising about 360 million Egyptian pounds, investment bank EFG Hermes said last Thursday.

“The subscriptions for both the public and private offerings for Fawry were large and strong because the industry itself is new to the market and has greater than average growth,” said Radwa El-Swaify, head of research at Pharos Securities Brokerage.

Fawry’s fortune is partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more people to place a high demand for its e-payment offerings. Being the leading fintech company in Egypt, Fawry’s revenue for the first half of 2020 increased by 47% to EGP 549.26M, from EGP 373.33 generated in 2019.Fawry has joined the rank of African companies that have become unicorns. Jumia was the first to attain unicorn status after listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Interswitch also became a unicorn after Visa acquired minority stakes last year. All three have attained global recognition, credibility, and reputation. The unicorn status creates a good public perception for investors and potential customers.

Fawry’s fortune is partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic that caused more people to place a high demand for its e-payment offerings. Being the leading fintech company in Egypt, Fawry’s revenue for the first half of 2020 increased by 47% to EGP 549.26M, from EGP 373.33 generated in 2019.

Ashraf Sabry and Mohamed Okasha founded Fawry in 2008. It has an online payment gateway for business owners to transact with customers via cash, credit cards, and e-wallets. In 2019, Fawry listed about 36% (254.6M) of its ordinary shares on the Egyptian Stock Exchange. It initially sold at EGP 6.46 per share, and then it tripled to EGP 18.78 at a market cap of EGP 13.3B in July 2020. After going public, other investors took an interest that led to a significant increase by over 300% in its stock price since its debut at the Egyptian Stock Exchange.

Nigerian fintech firm Carbon — an early-stage financial services startup based in Lagos — has posted on its website financials audited by KPMG.This comes four months after the company obtained a credit rating as a pre-IPO venture. Carbon — which recently rebranded its OneFi holding company and PayLater product titles into one name — plans to continue releasing its financial results on an annual basis, co-founder and CEO Chijioke Dozie told TechCrunch.This may not be totally unheard of in other global tech markets, but for startups in Africa’s big tech hubs — such as Nigeria — it’s a rarity.One of the first glimpses into startup financials in Nigeria came when Jumia shareholder Rocket Internet went public in 2014, which required it to include limited Jumia data in its annual report. The accompanying prospectus to Jumia’s listing this year on the New York Stock Exchange offered the most expansive financial data to date on a tech venture operating in Africa.Prior to this — and still for the most part — companies in the continent’s (mostly) pre-public (earlier-stage) startup hubs — such as Nigeria — provide little to no financial performance info.“Typically, in the local market, we have not seen a lot of voluntary transparency or the availability of data,” said Lexi Novitske — a Lagos-based VC investor at Acuity Venture Partners.“Most startups are concerned such disclosure could expose losses, give market intel to competitors or attract unwanted attention from regulators. It could also lead to negative negotiation leverage if partners saw that they were making good returns.”So why’d Carbon go to the trouble of putting its pre-public accounting out in the open for anyone to see?

Clients and recruiting were two reasons. “From a customer perspective, we are trying to get people to trust us with their financial services…so they can see this is the institution I’m dealing with and this is their financial position,” explained Carbon’s Dozie.Carbon has evolved from its original focus as an online lender to offer a broader array of mobile-based financial services — including payments, investment products, credit reports and business banking services. In March, the company acquired Nigerian payment solutions company Amplify for an undisclosed amount.By stats offered by Briter Bridges and a 2018 WeeTracker survey, fintech now receives the bulk of VC capital and deal-flow to African startups, many of which are attempting to reach the continent’s large unbanked and underbanked populations.Carbon fits into that category and its CEO believes being upfront about the startup’s financial position will attract top talent. “From a recruitment perspective, we want recruits to know we have good prospects — that this is a company that’s doing well and wants to keep doing well,” said Dozie.That impression is buoyed by Carbon’s initial results, which were fairly positive for a Series A-stage startup. The company had revenues in 2018 of $10 million, according to its online annual report, and turned a profit of around $500,000.It’s helped with recruiting interest, according to Dozie, who said he’d marked an increase in candidates inquiring about open positions since the results were posted.

we don’t get considered because investors don’t really think that you can get the results or this performance in the markets that we’re in,” he added — noting that Carbon has operations in Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa and is considering expansion in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC and Egypt.Investor Lexi Novitske thinks Carbon offering financial performance data is a good thing for Africa’s tech ecosystem. “The move builds trust from clients, partners or investors in a market where there is not a lot of openness,” she said. “I am encouraged to see how other companies will react. My hope is that more will openly report their own metrics…”Dozie says the company will continue to post audited financials on an annual basis, even if they show losses. If the startup continues to expand, attract capital and talent and grow revenues, other Nigerian fintech firms may follow suit.

FarmDrive has also partnered with the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) to build the capacity of Kenyan young farmers and stakeholders and help them access finance.

Farm Drive has a wide variety of partners including: investors (Engineers without Borders and Mercy Corps); capacity building (Open Capital advisors, ACRE Africa -to create insurance products); and financial institutions (Musoni Kenya).

FarmDrive catalyzes financial institutions to lend more to smallholder farmers by de-risking the process through clear and transparent records. Farmer clients of FarmDrive are benefiting from financial awareness, financial management tools, farming-related recommendations, access to finance and links to profitable markets.

Our Cropchain and LendIt platforms solve these two problems. Cropchain is our user-friendly integrated agricultural supply chain management platform that allows organizations to manage everything in the agricultural supply chain from outgrower schemes, logistics, traceability to digital trading, quality assurance and data analytics. LendIt, our financial inclusion platform enables farmers access digital services such mobile money payments for commodities sold, micro-lending/input financing, crop insurance and pension scheme for the informal sector.

Our Cropchain and LendIt platforms solve these two problems. Cropchain is our user-friendly integrated agricultural supply chain management platform that allows organizations to manage everything in the agricultural supply chain from outgrower schemes, logistics, traceability to digital trading, quality assurance and data analytics. LendIt, our financial inclusion platform enables farmers access digital services such mobile money payments for commodities sold, micro-lending/input financing, crop insurance and pension scheme for the informal sector.

Onboarding smallholder farmers onto the AgroCenta platform. Agents visit communities where smallholder farmers who deal in sorghum, rice, maize, millet and soybean are registered onto the AgroCenta platform to trade. Agents also work with farmer based organizations (FBOs) to carry out trading activities. 2 Facilitating trade deals on behalf of Smallholder farmers. Agents deal with buyers who wish to purchase directly from smallholder farmers. AgroCenta agents are trained in the field of technology, sales and marketing to effectively help smallholder farmers who have little or no knowledge of technology trade easily. 3 Gathering market information and statistical data. Agents are assigned to major trading markets across the country to collate data on market pricing for various commodities. This information is relayed to smallholder farmers via Voice technologies in languages they read and understand.

This FinTech startup founded by two Kenyan women is positioned to reach 3 million smallholder farmers in Kenya in the next 5 years.

FD uses mobile technology, predictive modelling, AI and a customer first approach to democratize access to loans to all farmers; ensuring farmers can apply for a loan from any type of phone and receive a decision on their loan application in seconds. FD has achieved this by building multiple channels of access and a fully automated lending process.

In the last 4 years, FD has seen that their loans increase the productivity and incomes of farmers and has led to reduced costs, increased scale, and improved quality of agricultural portfolios for lenders.

A free app available for any smartphone, SnapScan works almost like a pocket ATM linked to the user’s debit or credit card account. Instead of handing over a card, customers scan a unique SnapScan logo posted at the cash register with their camera-enabled phone. They enter the amount, type in a pin code (or use touch ID) and a few seconds later the vendor’s phone chimes with a confirmation sent by SMS. It’s quick, painless, and entirely safe, says Ehlers. SnapScan is backed by Standard Bank, one of South Africa’s biggest banks, and uses cutting-edge fraud protection technology. More to the point, he notes, it means that vendors never have access to actual credit card details. “That means no one is noting down your number so he can go shopping later,” says Ehlers.

It’s been so long since 30-year-old Cape Town entrepreneur Kobus Ehlers last used his wallet that he’s not even sure where it is. “My car maybe?” he says as he reflexively scans the cheerfully decorated offices of his startup, SnapScan. When it’s pointed out that leaving a wallet in a car in a city infamous for break-ins and carjackings may not be a good idea, he shrugs. He probably doesn’t even have the equivalent of five dollars in it, he says. “I never use cash. Credit cards are over. There are much better ways to pay for things.”As the co-founder of one of South Africa’s most successful electronic payments apps, Ehlers is of course expected to use his own product. But the real reason he isn’t worried about his wallet is because Cape Town is a city seduced by the idea of cashless and cardless transactions, in no small part because of his company’s success. “You can literally wake up in the morning, buy a cup of coffee, go to your dentist, have lunch, pay your bills, take a taxi, go out for dinner, and donate to your favorite cause without using cash or a card,” says Ehlers. “And in none of that is there any risk of your card details getting stolen, or you getting mugged for your cash.”

It’s been so long since 30-year-old Cape Town entrepreneur Kobus Ehlers last used his wallet that he’s not even sure where it is. “My car maybe?” he says as he reflexively scans the cheerfully decorated offices of his startup, SnapScan. When it’s pointed out that leaving a wallet in a car in a city infamous for break-ins and carjackings may not be a good idea, he shrugs. He probably doesn’t even have the equivalent of five dollars in it, he says. “I never use cash. Credit cards are over. There are much better ways to pay for things.”As the co-founder of one of South Africa’s most successful electronic payments apps, Ehlers is of course expected to use his own product. But the real reason he isn’t worried about his wallet is because Cape Town is a city seduced by the idea of cashless and cardless transactions, in no small part because of his company’s success. “You can literally wake up in the morning, buy a cup of coffee, go to your dentist, have lunch, pay your bills, take a taxi, go out for dinner, and donate to your favorite cause without using cash or a card,” says Ehlers. “And in none of that is there any risk of your card details getting stolen, or you getting mugged for your cash.”

BelCash’s helloCash service could have 2-3 million users this year and 10 million by 2017 or 2018, the firm’s chief executive Vince Diop said, adding that BelCash would receive a fee for each transaction made.

BelCash’s helloCash service could have 2-3 million users this year and 10 million by 2017 or 2018, the firm’s chief executive Vince Diop said, adding that BelCash would receive a fee for each transaction made.

Netherlands-based BelCash is offering a technology called helloCash, while MOSS ICT, mainly owned by an Ireland-based firm, is rolling out M-Birr in the nation of 96 million people.In both cases, Ethiopian banks and institutions will offer the service to customers and hold the cash deposited, in line with government policy that bars foreign firms or banks from investing in the financial sector or the telecoms industry.