Quote from Ndubuisi Ekekwe on September 7, 2018, 6:21 PM

Nala, Virtual Identity and Wallet.ng dazzle judging panel to be the three winners of the competition; All 11 finalists were officially inducted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship programme to explore commercial partnerships with the pan-African banking giant.

Winners of the 2018 Ecobank Fintech Challenge were announced at a ceremony held at Ecobank’s (Ecobank.com) headquarters in Lome, Togo on 30^th August 2018.

Nala, from Tanzania, beat the ten other finalists to emerge as the overall winner of the competition. Virtual Identity from South Africa and Wallet.ng from Nigeria were the first and second runners up. They won cash prizes worth US$10,0000, $7,000 and US$5,000 respectively.

Nala, based in Tanzania, is a mobile money application that works offline, without an internet connection. Nala provides a unified user experience in which multiple financial services can be connected on one application. It can host multiple SIMs, enabling users to manage their spending and take control of their finances.

Second placed Virtual Identity is an innovative platform designed to disrupt traditional customer onboarding for banks. The process is fully digital, creating a virtual video conferencing link between the agent and the customer. Its easy to use web-based solution allows the client to complete tedious KYC processes from anywhere, making it both convenient and time saving.

The third placed prize winner, Wallet.ng, is a start-up providing an alternative bank for a growing generation of digital natives. Its core strength is building a banking platform that is as native to customers’ devices as Facebook and WhatsApp.

I think the real winners are African consumers. If our corporations continue to host these competitions, our young people would improve their games, to serve our people. The vision in Nala is huge: think of Mint 2.0. (Intuit bought Mint, a startup that worked in unifying people's financial lives in U.S.)