Decode Fintech

Issue 119

Jan 17 - Jan 23, 2022

Hi there,

It was a long weekend for me as Arsenal drew against Burnley and the Nigerian football team were knocked out of the African Cup of Nations by Tunisia. On the bright side, Berrettini - my favourite tennis player - is through to the Australian Open semis and will be playing Nadal (fingers crossed on that one).

Episode 6 of Artwork is live! Mohini Ufeli, photographer and Media Manager at Paystack, breaks down practical communication tactics that you can use to successfully convert leads to happy customers. Watch and share the episode here.

Finally, we are hiring for a couple of interesting roles at Paystack. Please check out our careers page and share with your network.

Stay safe and enjoy the rest of your week!

Osaro Aiwekhoe

Product Specialist, Paystack

Payments

Africa

PAPSS officially launches in Africa. The Pan-African Payments and Settlement System (PAPSS) officially launched after a successful pilot with countries in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). PAPSS will allow users across the continent send and receive money in local African currencies and is expected to facilitate trade and save transaction costs. Nairametrics

EDITOR'S NOTE

In our issue 81, we expounded the functions of PAPSS and how we think it will ease trade across different African countries

Ghana

Chipper Cash receives Payment Service License in Ghana. The peer-to-peer cross-border fintech has been granted an Enhanced Payment Service Provider Licence to operate in Ghana. the new license will allow Chipper Cash compliantly engage in payments and remittances services, which are core to the fintech's operations. Bitcoin KE

Conversations

Global

What exactly is the fuss about web3? The latest episode of The Open Africa podcast sheds light on the significance of web3 and popular concepts like Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi). The Open Africa Podcast

Fundraising

South Africa

Finclusion Group raises $20 million pre-series A. This comes after a $20 million debt funding from Lendable. The South African-based fintech says they’ll use the funding to drive adoption of their different credit-led financial products across several cities in Africa. The funding is made of debt financing which was provided by local currency funds in Eswatini and South Africa and equity financing which was provided by Future Africa, Christian Faes, Charlie Delingpole, Amandine Lobelle, and a host of other investors TechCrunch

EDITOR'S NOTE

We wrote about Finclusion’s $20M debt fundraise and their acquisition of SmartAdvance in our issue 107 and issue 108 respectively.

Ghana

Float raises $17 million in a seed round. The Ghanaian fintech raised $7 million in equity and $10 million in debt financing. Cauris provided the debt financing while Tiger Global and JAM Fund co-led the equity financing. Jesse, the CEO, says the investment will help them improve their product offering to specific business verticals and also pursue expansion in Q2. Ghanaian fintech Float raises $17M seed to power cash flow for commerce in Africa – TechCrunch

EDITOR'S NOTE

Float’s positioning as an “Operating System for SMBs” is fascinating - their strategy seems to be building deep financial relationships with SMBs by first providing them with working capital and then digital tools to help them run their business. We’ve already seen a couple of fintech entrants in this space, many of which led with business banking as their strategy. This definitely is an interesting space to keep an eye on.

Uganda

Asaak raises $30million pre-Series A. The Ugandan-based asset financing fintech has raised $30 million in both debt and equity funding. The startup whose major product offering is motorbike financing also offers smartphone and fuel financing to the operators. This funding will be used to increase penetration in their existing market. TechCrunch

Kenya

Zanifu raises $1 million in seed funding. The Kenyan-based fintech has raised a seed fund of $1 million from Saviu Ventures, Launch Africa Venture, Sayani, and a host of other angel investors. Just like Alerzo and TradeDepot in Nigeria, Zanifu provides short-term stock financing to retailers in Kenya. They plan to use the fund to expand into Ghana and Uganda TechCrunch

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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