“Exploring the fintech landscape in Africa: Insights from the latest Google Trends report
The Africa Google Trend report from AppsFlyer and Google reveals key insights into how mobile technology is enabling individuals in Africa to achieve financial autonomy.
Here are the most important findings from the report:
- Increase in installs of financial apps across Africa between 2021 and 2022.
- Search interest for finance-related searches has tripled in Nigeria in the last 5 years.
- Growth in ad spend for finance app installs across Africa in 2022 with an increase in 2021 and then continued increases in early 2022, followed by a reversal in the second half of the year due to the economic slowdown and other macro conditions.
- Year-on-year increase in people searching for ‘grant status’ and ‘payment dates’ in South Africa.
The rise of financial apps
Conditions in Africa have proven to be fertile ground for the rapid growth of the fintech sector. A large part of the population is mobile first, and two thirds of the population in sub-Saharan Africa do not have a traditional bank account. With mobile penetration in sub-Saharan Africa expected to reach 50% of the population by 2025, many users have turned to mobile apps for loans, payments, cryptocurrency and other financial services. This has led to the growth of Africa’s crypto market, which reached $105.6 billion in 2021 alone.
African super apps continue to evolve
Superapps already had a large presence in the African mobile market, but we’ve seen them gain an even stronger foothold in the population over the past twelve months as they aim to increase financial inclusion.
By combining functions such as payments, communication and e-commerce into a single application, super apps have found a home in a continent where 85% of new smartphones sold were classified as “low-end” by 2021. With storage and connectivity to a premium on such devices has an app that can act as a one-stop shop enormous value for African users.
We are now seeing many large African companies – especially telcos – starting to tap into this demand, building their own super apps to cater to their audiences. Vodacom launched VodaPay in 2021, an app that offers its users various services such as digital financial services, online shopping, lifestyle tools and more. Similarly, MTN has launched MTN MoMo, a mobile money service that allows users, among other things, to transfer money, pay bills and access loans.
The future of fintech in Africa: Challenges and opportunities
The rise of financial apps and super apps in Africa has been driven by a combination of market conditions and customer demand. The industry is expected to continue to grow in the coming years as more people use technology for financial services. However, global macro conditions in the second half of 2022 are expected to impact industry growth.
