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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.

In 2012, two brothers, Chijioke Dozie and Ngozi Dozie, founded Carbon, a Nigerian digital bank start-up. Carbon began as a digital lending company, but now the company provides a variety of services, from payments to savings to investments. According to Dozie, “Our annual report will be released in the second quarter after our financial audit is complete, to gain customer trust, Chijioke Dozie, the CEO, told ProWellTech in 2019 that the company will make Carbon’s financials public.” If you note, before we published the 2019 fiscal year update, we released a year under review in January 2020.Gross profits, profit or loss before and after tax, liabilities and equity, total assets, etc. are included in Carbon’s annual report. Carbon’s year of analysis reveals processed payments, client base, disbursed loans, and investments made on the platform. The business with about 659,000 customers processed N96.54 billion (~$241.35 million) according to Carbon’s year of analysis for fiscal year 2020, which is up 89 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. N25.51 billion (~$63 million) was the disbursement volume for its lending arm, an improvement of 9.1 percent from the 2019 financial year. Investments worth N13.02 billion (~32.55 million) were made on the site, up by 365 percent from FY 2019.The factors that affected these numbers last year, according to the company, included the launch of an iOS app that pushed clients Acquisition, introducing its feature for low-income customers with USSD banking services; and a social chat feature to allow faster transactions. Besides that, Carbon obtained a microfinance bank license in an attempt to become a digital bank. The license implies, according to Dozie, that Carbon’s customers are given additional protection by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation through depositor insurance. The standard Carbon wallet is now a full-fledged bank account, Dozie says, and clients will transact on the platform like any bank would.

South African fintech startup Jumo closed a $55 million round from a diverse group of investors, the company confirmed.

Nigeria, in particular, has become Africa’s unofficial capital for fintech development, surpassing Kenya in 2019 for drawing the most fintech specific and overall VC on the continent

Jumo joins a growing list of African digital-finance startups raising big money from outside investors and expanding abroad.

The MTN Mobile Money (MoMo) platform is closing in on a total of just over two million users since its relaunch in February.

Bosire and Kimani launched FarmDrive in May 2015. The digital recordkeeping platform serves as a basis for bankers to establish credit ratings and determine which farmers are best suited for small loans. FarmDrive’s pilot program consisted of 50 farmers. Today hundreds of thousands are in FarmDrive’s database; about 830 have received financing. In turn the banks pay FarmDrive for essentially functioning as their credit bureau for Kenya’s vast farming community. The two entrepreneurs have no intention of stopping there. “There are more than five million small farmers in Kenya,” Bosire says. “Throughout Africa it’s about 50 million. But when we started FarmDrive, we always had global ambitions. We’re building solutions for farmers in Asia too.”

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.

As mentioned in the last article, it is not possible to define exactly what a robo-advisor is, as the individual providers offer a range of services of varying breadth. In fact, robo-advisors have long since ceased to offer mere recommendations or advice, and most providers are steadily expanding their services into a fully integrated solution. Accordingly, people now associate a robo-advisor with a platform that can also be used to make an investment directly (see [Bloch/Vins 2017, 114]). However, this service, for example, is linked to certain regulatory requirements, which are presented below. It should be noted here that this is the regulatory framework in Germany. In terms of regulation, four business models can be distinguished in the area of robo advisory services:

M-Pesa “grew at a blistering pace following its inception in 2007.” [1] In less than two years from its launch, M-Pesa had become the leading money transfer method in the country, with over 50 percent of people sending money via M-Pesa and over 65 percent receiving funds through the system in 2009. By 2015 there were 19.9 million active M-Pesa users, up 18 percent from 2013/14. It is said that 43 percent of Kenya's GDP flowed through M-Pesa, with over 237 million person-to-person transactions.

M-Pesa is an SMS-based system that enables users to deposit, send and withdraw funds using their mobile phone. Customers do not need to have a bank account and can transact at any of the country's 40,000 agent outlets. Registration and deposits are free and pricing for most other transactions is based on a tiered structure to allow even the lowest-income users to use the system. Transaction values are typically small, ranging from US$5 to US$30.

AIRO: There is a growing demand among Egyptian consumers for more convenient payment methods, according to a recent survey conducted by Fawry, the first nationwide electronic payment service in Egypt. Over 90 percent of Egyptians said that saving time was their primary concern when it comes to paying bills.

Ashraf Sabry, CEO of Fawry, said, “Research conducted for Fawry by IPSOS showed that 85.6 percent of respondents surveyed are seeking more efficient payment methods for household bills. The average Egyptian family has between 15 to 17 regular payments to make. These include mobile and landline bills, utilities, insurance, school or university fees and much more.

Fawry was established in response to growing consumer demand for alternative payment methods that simplify the process of receiving bills and paying them. Fawry today has 12,000 Fawry payment points across the country, that form one-stop-shop, instant, multiple-bill payment locations

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.

Previously, FD received $50,000 USD of early-stage seed funding from EWB Canada to develop their platform and prove to financial service providers that smallholder farmers are profitable clients.

The rise of online banking around the world has helped other economies solve these very challenges. Cash, for example, is hard to transport. Coins and bills are prone to theft, and their use makes dodging taxes easier for those so inclined. For individuals who must pay in person, getting across a gridlocked city like Cairo is logistically difficult. Together, these problems can constrain an economy. In Egypt, where 94 percent of all transactions were cash as recently as 2014, such a system stymies economic growth.

Fawry is part of a new wave of technology companies ushering Egypt into the digital age. Many of these firms are helping transform industries like banking, health care, and transport, and in the process creating good jobs for young Egyptians, more than 30 percent of whom are unemployed.