| Kenya | Airtel partners with Zepz for mobile money remittance. In a partnership between Airtel and WorldRemit (Zepz), Airtel mobile money users in Kenya will be able to receive money in their e-wallet from 129 countries for free. TechCabal |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | Although not for free, a similar direct-to-wallet remittance service already exists between Kenyan fintech giant, M-Pesa and WorldRemit. What then could be Airtel's play with this no processing cost strategy? User acquisition? If so, how big is remittance in Kenya and will this strategy translate to a handful of new users? |
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| Nigeria | USSD: How Nigeria’s biggest bank measures the previously unmeasurable. Measuring the performance of USSD channels has always been a pain for marketers. In this article, Google's Osaze Osoba shares insight into how Zenith Bank figured out attribution for the acquisition campaigns of their USSD channels. Think with Google |
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| Nigeria | On the Japanese card that refused to work on Nigerian POS terminals. On September 23, a Twitter user shared that her Japanese friend visiting Nigeria had to move around with cash because her credit or debit card issued in Japan didn't work on the POS terminals in Nigeria. Twitter |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | Local card transactions typically need several parties to shake hands (i.e. exchange data) before they can be authorized and settled successfully. On a high level, the parties involved in this process are: the issuing bank (the cardholder's bank), the card network (Mastercard, Visa, Verve, etc), and the acquirer (the merchant's bank or payment service). The parties are similar in cross-border transactions, but it isn't always straightforward. In some cases, the issuing bank might require cardholders to notify them before traveling overseas. This is to ensure that their cards are enabled for overseas transactions. Other times, issuing banks may also require that the cardholder change their card PIN before traveling. It's also not unusual for payment terminals to not be configured to accept all card types.
Where cardholders are oblivious of these factors before traveling abroad, they're likely to face a similar experience to the friend from Japan. Scenarios like this are, however, ammunition for proponents of a cardless future. They believe that card payment is a broken process that is designed to extract value from users. In the conversation section of Issue 89, we asked if the future of card payment (in Africa) will be cardless. What do you think? |
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| Nigeria | Infibranches Technologies secures a $2m funding. Infibranches is a Nigerian fintech company that enables companies with large distribution networks, particularly Solar Home System (SHS) distributors and mini-grid developers, digitize and manage the core operations of their business. They also provide a single point of integration for payments collection and other financial services for these companies. The funding from All On will be used for agent acquisition and product development. TechCabal |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | In issue 107, we reported on what seems to be an emerging trend whereby fintechs build specialized solutions for specific user sets. What do you think is driving this trend? Tweet your thoughts at us. |
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| South Africa | Finclusion acquires payroll startup, HelloHR. The South African fintech startup has acquired HelloHR for an undisclosed amount. Finclusion's CEO, Timothy Nuy, mentioned that the acquisition allows the Finclusion Group provide employers on their SmartAdvance product with access to payroll services. African Heroes |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | SmartAdvance is a lending and salary advance product by the Finclusion group. This acquisition signals a trend where lending companies mine payroll data, a useful parameter for credit scoring. In some cases, lending companies will connect to the borrower's bank account or partner with payroll companies to provide this data. But for Finclusion Group, an outright acquisition of the payroll company is the way. |
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| Egypt | e-finance to go public on the Egyptian stock exchange. Egypt’s state-run digital payments infrastructure announced its plans to list up to 14.5% of its shares on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX) in the fourth quarter of 2021. African Heroes |
| | EDITOR'S NOTE | e-finance is a fintech company that offers different financial services and products through its subsidiaries. In addition to their offerings, they process around 2.1 trillion Egyptian Pounds in government transactions. |
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Share a tip | Do you have an announcement, event, or job posting you'd like to share, or have you come across an interesting bit of African fintech news recently? Hit reply and let me know! I might be able to include it in next week's newsletter. |
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