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Bismart was awarded seed capital of Sh1 million in April 2018 by Standard chartered Women in Tech programmed and office space for nine months at IBIZ Africa incubator, as the most innovative and scalable business model in Kenya.

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 9- GreenTec Capital, a German investment boutique focused on African start-ups, has entered into an investment agreement with Bismart, a Kenyan start-up insurance aggregator leveraging on digital platforms and technologies to educate and advice customers on the best insurance and investment solutions available in the Kenya market.

The launch of the services, which allow customers to make payments or receive money via a mobile that is linked to a bank account, mirrors technology used in other African nations that has drawn millions of people into the financial system.

The main telecoms operators in the country are all pitching in too – starting with Safaricom which uses the M-Pesa mobile application. In my book “Startup Lions, at the heart of African Tech” I explain how M-Pesa was born organically (and unexpectedly) from contact with the poorest Kenyan populations who didn’t even have bank accounts. A great many of them used ‘m-banking’ to gain financial independence which led to the M-Pesa service having over 22.6 million users in Kenya in 2019 – almost two-thirds of the adult population. A few hours after the president’s announcement, M-Pesa decided to drastically reduce its usage fees and to remove the daily transaction volume limit across the board in order to increase cash flow.