The Mastercard study sees an increase in fintech across Africa

• A new Mastercard study looked at fintech across the African continent and was released as a white paper at the Mobile World Congress Africa.
• Unsurprisingly, it found South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya to be emerging fintech hubs.
• One of the most important findings was the fact that fintech accounted for mega deals of more than $100 million each during 2021.

Mastercard has released a new study that looks at fintech across the African continent and highlights some of the key figures regarding this area during 2021 that make it such an exciting prospect.

The study was recently released as a white paper at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Africa, where fintech startups in Africa grew 81 percent in 2021.

Titled The Future of Fintech: Rapid Growth Attracts Smart Capital, the study unsurprisingly cited South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya as the continent’s fintech hubs, which makes sense given most of Africa’s best-performing startups, as well as investments, come out of these regions.

Some of the other key findings from the study look at how the fintech sector accounted for 27 percent of the record number of deals closed across Africa, along with 61 percent of the $2.7 billion distributed across the continent in 2021. In in addition to this, the fintech sector yielded mega deals of more than $100 million each.

While this impressive growth can be attributed to ingenuity and drive within this specific sector, as the White Paper points out, much of the success found in these early stages is the result of attempts to negotiate long hurdles.

“The white paper went on to find how fintech innovation in Africa has been driven by the need to address multiple pain points, with a focus on increasing financial and digital inclusion. South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya were also seen as among the countries leading the transition to digital payments, with infrastructure and political frameworks that enable this growth well in place, says Mastercard in a press release sent to Hypertext.

“It is encouraging to witness the growth of the fintech landscape across the region, creating more opportunities for start-ups, scale-ups, enablers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to bring more people into the digital fold,” add. Ngozi Megwa, SVP of Digital Partners and Enablers, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mastercard.

The company also notes that the boom in this sector across Africa is a sign of growth worldwide, with worldwide funding jumping to a new record of $131.5 billion in 2021. Looking to the future, Mastercard says the growth in fintech will only is set to intensify in the coming years.

“Used by demand, fintech has seen products based on multifaceted innovation in emerging and mature economies. By offering scalable financial services using the internet, blockchain and algorithms, fintech companies have expanded the reach of financial services traditionally offered by banks, including loans, payments, investments or wealth management, the company enthuses.

To download and read the white paper for yourself, go here.

[Image – Provided]