Africa is moving into the next phase of the fintech universe. Yes, simply building products and services to enable people and businesses to receive and send money will not deliver added value to stakeholders (investors, merchants, communities, users, etc.). The future of African fintech will be anchored on two pillars, in addition to the requirements for seamless transfer of funds: merchant ecosystems and partnerships.
On the ecosystems, you must offer, besides the ability to receive/send funds, tools to help your customers run their business. And these tools include bookkeeping, invoicing, domain training and other add-ons. In fact, in addition to helping them move money, you need to help them make money too!
For partnerships, it’s hopeless to think you can do it alone. To thrive as a fintech, you need to collaborate with others in your sector and outside your sector. For example, you can partner with a payroll company to integrate their APIs so that your salesperson can also perform payroll on your platform. The same applies to specialized training that can help the merchants do better in the market. Of course, there is another dimension to partnerships that 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 ultimately in the market it is about money, with the ability to pay and be paid.
The destination: this video explains.
In this videocast, I discuss the need to build a truly pan-African digital remittance/remittance banking product that is location or currency agnostic in Africa. None of the products we have today meet that standard. Basically, I envision a situation where all you need to buy and sell across Africa is one bank account in just one country in the African Union. With it, you don’t even have to think about the specific currency of that account, as the technology will seamlessly enable access to other African markets for payments, transfers, etc. The banks or fintech companies still have to comply with all rules related to international transfers , forex etc. The only difference is that the customers will not see them as they will be hidden with technology.
