5 FinTech startups bolstering financial inclusion in Africa

By Pavithra R

Africa hosts a large number of innovative and interesting companies and solutions. The FinTech sector in Africa is booming, a major reason for this being the higher number of underbanked population. The FinTech industry, being the most funded from both local and international investors has a huge opportunity to drive financial inclusion and fix these financial gaps. With various new and existing solutions emerging, the continent is trying to bolster its financial sector.

Here is a list of 5 promising startups in African FinTech landscape:

Jumo (2014)

Cape Town-based Jumo is a technology platform, developed for building and running financial services. The FinTech is redefining banking services for a mobile, digital age, and has built a full technology stack to create financial services for everybody. Its technology stack offers savings, lending, and insurance products to entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

The company’s partners include financial services providers such as the Barclays Africa Group, Absa Group Limited, Ecobank – The Pan African Bank, Letshego Bank, and Telenor Microfinance Bank, as well as mobile network operators such as MTN, Airtel, Telenor, and Tigo. The company has partnered with Uber in December 2018. In November 2019, the company announced that it is serving over 15 million customers across six markets in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Pakistan. The firm has raised a total of $146.7 million in funding to date and is planning to launch its service in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria in the near future.

Paycode (2016)

Paycode is specializing in technology solutions that leverage biometric digital identity to guarantee proof of life and enables low-cost last-mile delivery of essential financial services. The FinTech provides a secure end-to-end payment gateway that makes sending and receiving payments easy. Its solutions are interoperable with existing technology infrastructure and ensure payment integrity using secure, verified, and authenticated unique identity. It processes transactions offline in real-time with no connectivity mandatory to provide financial inclusion. The FinTech recently partnered with Crown Agents Bank to serve unbanked Africans.

Bundle (2020)

Founded by Yele Bademosi, a former director at Binance Labs, Bundle allows users to request, send, and receive cash or crypto from their contacts. The FinTech aims to evolve into a super-app with a native digital wallet that supports crypto and cash serving Africans and the world. It allows users to buy, sell, and store digital currencies such as Bitcoin, BNB, and Ethereum, as well as deposit and withdraw digital currencies and local fiat currencies.

Incubated by Binance, Bundle operates as an independent entity and plans to support 30+ African countries by the year-end, creating a simplified fiat on/off ramp for crypto on the continent. The company received $450k from Binance in 2019 in a pre-seed fundraise. The application is available for Android users and is to be launched for iOS soon.

Centbee (2017)

Johannesburg based Centbee is a payment company specializing in merchant payments, cross-border remittances and other cryptocurrency-related products. The FinTech believes that Bitcoin SV will be the fastest, cheapest and best way to pay for goods and services at any global retailers. The firm is building an ecosystem of merchants and customers, providing the ‘on-ramps’ to the bitcoin super-highway.

Mama Money(2013)

Mama Money is a rapidly growing, innovative, tech company and a social business money transfer operator. It offers various easy low cost ways for foreign nationals to send money home to support their families. Its mobile application allows customers to send money through a vast payout network that’s continuously expanding.  Mama Money considers social upliftment through financial inclusion as its core belief. Recently, the firm partnered with Western Union for global reach via Western Union’s Global Network.