Africa is moving into the next phase of the fintech universe. Yes, merely building products and services to enable people and companies to receive and send money, will not deliver outperforming-value to stakeholders (investors, merchants, communities, users, etc). The future of African fintech will be anchored on two pillars, besides the requirements of seamless transfer of funds: ecosystems for merchants and partnerships.
On the ecosystems, you must offer, besides the ability to receive/send funds, tools to help your customers run their business operations. And those tools include bookkeeping, invoicing, domain training, and other adds-on. Indeed, besides helping them move money, you need to help them also make money!
For partnerships, it is hopeless to think you can do it alone. To thrive as a fintech, you must partner with others in your sector and outside your sector. For example, you can partner with a payroll company to integrate its APIs so that your merchant can also do payroll within your platform. The same goes with specialized training which can help the merchants do better in the market. Of course, there is another dimension of partnership which involves integrating with companies in other countries to expand your reach.
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In my keynote during an Africa Fintech Festival, in Uganda, I explained fintech as “the new growth operating system in Africa” because at the end of all in the market, it is about money, with the ability to pay and be paid.
The destination: this video explains.
n this videocast, I discuss the need to build a truly pan-African digital remittance/transfer banking product which is agnostic of location or currency in Africa. None of the products we have today meets that standard. Largely, I envisage a situation where all you need to buy and sell across Africa is one bank account in just one African Union country. With that, you do not have to even think about the specific currency of that account as technology will seamlessly make it possible to access other African markets for payments, transfer, etc. The banks or fintech companies must still comply with all regulations related to international transfers, forex, etc. The only difference is that customers will not see them as they will be hidden with technology.
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