MooveBeta merges with ImpalaPay to provide a connected economy for Africa

By Edlyn Cardoza

Adanian Labs Africa incubated FinTech start-up MooveBeta has recently announced its merger with ImpalaPay, a FinTech blockchain company with operations across 42 African countries and 134 worldwide. The merger will provide a payment platform that will enable the Pan African and Diaspora communities to transact via e-commerce, social commerce, peer to peer and enterprise using multiple interoperable platforms, including mobile money, cards, bank accounts and/or crypto wallets powering over 500 million people.

MooveBeta, an e-commerce and FinTech start-up that helps users move value simply and easily using a voucher system, has been incubated at Adanian Labs for six months with a mission to empower consumers with the ability to send microtransactions via mobile money from anywhere on the globe to Africa and intra-Africa. 

ImpalaPay, with more than 10 years in operation, is a strong B2B payment company responsible for building the first P2P mobile money multi-currency cross border platform with Bharti Airtel in 2014. ImpalaPay has been operating B2B payments on behalf of Airtel and IMT partners across 17 countries in Africa, including interoperability between Airtel and MTN in Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. ImpalaPay has also executed interoperability between Airtel with Mpesa, UBA and Africash, powering more than 200 million wallets and over USD 1.8 billion transactions between 2018 and 2021.

With MSME traders supporting 69% of the African population, the partnership between the two FinTech solutions will set MooveBeta on a growth path to deliver differentiated payment solutions for microtransactions in the region and beyond with a first phase roll-out pegged on 17 African countries.

Peris Wanjiru, co-founder and CEO of MooveBeta, said, “We are very optimistic to becoming a strong fintech contender in the new financial world in Africa, given that we are blockchain focused in our offering to support the continent’s growing payment demands in a currently fragmented ecosystem. We are building with the future in mind, understanding the evolution and transformative nature of the digitalization movement taking place in the continent.”

Africa has the world’s fastest-growing population, and the UN anticipates at least half of the global population growth between now and 2050 will come from the continent. 15% of the sub-Saharan African population is middle class. However, that proportion is steadily increasing in Africa, which is one of the positive growth indicators. This growth, coupled with urbanisation, has increased productivity and economic development.

John Mbindyo, the founder and CEO of ImpalaPay, said, “In the last 10 years of our operations we have seen many accomplishments by African start-ups in the fintech space. Even though the continent’s youthful, entrepreneurial, and digitally savvy population embraces mobile usage, unfortunately there still is a large unbanked and underbanked population. On the flip side, however, these challenges have provided the perfect opportunities for companies like ours to be innovative and disruptive. Across the continent, this particular sector of the population (banked and unbanked) who have historically been left out by conventional institutions, are now looking to alternative innovations for their financial solutions. And this is what we are here to address through this merger with MooveBeta.”

According to multiple research, the payment and remittance space accounts for one of the most sought-after segments, with a 30% growth in start-up companies in the last 4 years. “As fintech innovators we aim to spur financial inclusion by solving some of the difficulties experienced by businesses and individuals alike —such as money transfers, savings and investment, payment and access to credit. Through this partnership we will be contributing immensely to the transformation of Africa’s financial trajectory,” further stated Mbindyo.

Since its inception in March 2020, Adanian labs has provided a launchpad for 40+ start-ups in 5 countries where it has a presence, creating unmatched opportunities in the African tech start-up space. Of the first cohort of 14 start-ups incubated by Adanian Labs, five have raised $ 7X seed funding, including the lab itself, highlighting Adanian’s ‘Camel Theory’ as it strives to become the leading borderless Africa tech venture studio. 26 start-ups started in March 2022 in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria and South Africa.

“Adanian Labs is creating unprecedented opportunities for tech start-ups on the continent. From access to funding and investors, training and mentorship, to go to market strategies and launch pads with key infrastructure we have been able to offer the start-ups under the Adanian Lab’s umbrella opportunities that would be almost impossible to access otherwise. This merger between our start-up MooveBeta and industry B2B Fintech leader ImpalaPay to build a connected financial ecosystem across Africa and the diaspora is a gamechanger in the new financial world,” said John Kamara, Adanian Labs co-Founder and CEO.

With this kind of targeted de-risked support, hand-holding and guidance from the lab to African start-ups and young tech-preneurs, the merger of ImpalaPay and MooveBeta promises to be just one in a long line of incredible African start-up merger and acquisition stories.