FinTech news in east africa category

Thus, users in Nigeria and Kenya can receive foreign payments from more than 88 countries using USD, GBP and EUR bank accounts created on the platform, convert them into their local currencies (naira and shilling) and withdraw directly to their mobile money or local bank account. With its Grey Business product, the one-year-old fintech intends to tap into the market and provide a cheaper option to send and receive local currencies within the continent, particularly for micro and small businesses. In the latest development, Grey, a fintech in this category that provides virtual international bank accounts to African freelancers and remote workers, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding. COO Aghedo said the company privately launched a business-focused product, Grey Business, to complement this consumer-facing growth and extend its product beyond remittances and person-to-person payments.

Antler East Africa, the Nairobi office of VC firm and venture builder Antler, has closed a $13.5 million fund to invest in early-stage tech startups in the region. Being a female-led VC team, Antler East Africa is particular about investing more in startups founded and led by women in the region, Kebede said

Upon carefully studying different models pioneered by digital-first banks such as TymeBank, Kuda and FairMoney, they saw a big gap for building a savings product that helps solve what they think is the biggest problem facing African consumers: inflation and currency devaluation.

The simple reason is that people need smartphones more than they need solar systems, evident in M-KOPA’s numbers as of July last year — which in 18 months had already sold 500,000 smartphones, half the units solar systems managed in 10 years. M-KOPA is known chiefly for its pay-as-you-go (PAYG) financing model that allows customers to build ownership of appliances over time by paying an initial deposit followed by flexible micro-payments.

Integration with payment providers in sub-Saharan Africa (mainly serving Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa) like Yoco, Paystack and Flutterwave will follow suit, said the chief executive, without giving specifics about when it would roll out the product for the region.

Today, the startup has also partnered with Standard Bank, headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa and with a presence in 20 countries across the continent, to offer financial services to millions of workers (like motorcycle taxi operators) in the informal sector through the startup’s proprietary digital loan origination system.

The Bay Area startup wants to take a more blended solution to crypto lending with its protocol, building up capital pools and allowing fintech organizations outside the U.S. to make their case to lenders operating on the protocol and get access to funds while showing non-crypto collateral. Goldfinch is a crypto startup building a decentralized lending protocol that allows organizations to receive crypto loans without owning massive amounts of crypto already.