Côte d’Ivoire positioned as key fintech hub

Home to a number of popular FinTech unicorns and pan-African payments giants such as Flutterwave, Interswitch and OPay, Nigeria’s tech startups often steal the headlines.

However, the burgeoning financial technology in Ivory Coast is an indication that Nigeria is not the only country in West Africa driving FinTech growth and development in the region.

Ivory Coast’s capital, Abidjan, has emerged as a FinTech springboard for Francophone Africa in recent years, offering companies looking to expand in French-speaking countries an ideal alternative to Lagos, Nigeria.

For example, Abidjan-based payment solutions provider Bizao has successfully expanded its footprint into other Francophone West African countries, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal and Gabon.

The firm has also put down roots in the French-speaking, or at least French, parts of Central and North Africa, establishing a presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cameroon and Tunisia.

Read more: African Payments Solution Bizao Raises $8.2M for Regional Expansion

To further its growth, Bizao announced last month that it closed an €8 million ($8.2 million) Series A round that makes the promising FinTech one of Ivory Coast’s most well-funded startups.

With an impressive technology stack that connects mobile money services and banking networks, the Bizao platform enables merchants to process a variety of payments and customers can easily transfer money across borders via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) or bank account.

A region of Mobile-First payments

The preference for USSD-based solutions is directly linked to the high mobile penetration in the country, which is also a reflection of the continent more broadly.

According to the latest data from the World Bank, there are over 150 mobile subscriptions per 100 people. In addition, data from the World Bank’s Findex shows that in 2021, 40% of Ivorian adults had a mobile money account, compared to only 8% having a credit or debit card.

See also: Homegrown Super Apps Shaping the Future of the Mobile-First African Market

In fact, West Africa is generally a region where mobile telecommunications infrastructure has flourished while bank account ownership remains low.

As Mathias Léopoldie, president of Ivorian FinTech Julaya, told PYMNTS in an interview last year, West Africa’s strong infrastructure and high mobile phone usage are key to promoting financial inclusion and moving business payments in the region into the digital age.

Read Léopoldie’s interview: West Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure lays the foundations for the modernization of B2B payments

He added that while paper checks are still prevalent in developed countries such as the US despite heavy investment in payments modernization, Francophone West Africa has the potential to leapfrog legacy solutions into a world of mobile-first payments.

Another West African startup, Senegal-based mobile money provider Wave, last year closed a $200 million Series A funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation, becoming French Africa’s first unicorn.

Related: African FinTech Wave Closes $200M Series A Funding Round

As of September last year, the FinTech firm, which launched in Ivory Coast in April 2021, had around 5 million active users on its platform and is on a mission to make Africa the world’s first cashless continent.

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