Tochukwu here, I joined the Decode Fintech team about 3 months ago and this is my first time writing this summary! I'm both anxious and excited! At Paystack, we compete in a weekly football (soccer) tournament and in our last match my team won 4-1. I'm also currently the highest goal scorer in the league with 3 goals.
Tochukwu Ironsi
Product Specialist, Paystack
Payments
Kenya
JointPesa launches an escrow-based e-commerce platform. Kenyan-based JointPesa has partnered with Finserve Africa, a financial solutions provider, to launch an escrow-based e-commerce platform. The platform seeks to facilitate secure transactions between buyers and sellers by providing real-time escrow services that enhance trust in local digital payments. Mobile Money Africa
Rwanda
Flutterwave acquires a license to operate in Rwanda. Nigerian fintech startup, Flutterwave, has obtained a license from the Bank of Rwanda to commence operations in Rwanda. This announcement comes a few weeks after the startup raised $35million in Series B funding. Guardian Nigeria
Global
MoneyGram introduces FastSend for payments to mobile phone numbers. MoneyGram has partnered with Visa to launch FastSend, a real-time money transfer feature. Using FastSend, customers can send money deposit instructions to a recipient's phone number. The recipient then connects their debit card to FastSend and remits the sent funds into their bank account using Visa Direct. Finextra
Conversations
Twitter
Why did MoneyGram choose Visa over Ripple for FastSend? Alex Saunders (@AlexSaundersAU) sparks a conversation in this Twitter thread over MoneyGram's decision to partner with Visa for FastSend over Ripple, the cryptocurrency-based settlement and remittance service that has invested about $50m in MoneyGram.
Twitter
How the Internet Protocol of the internet compares to crypto. Ali Yahya (@AliYahya), a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, outlines the simple but significant role of the Internet Protocol (IP) layer in the exponential growth of the internet. He then compares this to the growing application of blockchain technologies in this brilliant Twitter thread.
Twitter
What's driving this unprecedented growth in financial inclusion? Bob Annibale (@BobAnnibaleCiti) and Ronit Ghose (@ronit_ghose) of Citi Bank spoke about the trends that have driven the growth in financial inclusion in the past decade. You can access the report here
Remittance
Africa
Ecobank partners with Alipay for cross-border payment service. Ecobank has partnered with Alipay, the international mobile payments company, to provide cross-border payment services through Ecobank's RapidTransfer service. With this partnership, customers receiving international payments via Alipay can now accept funds in their local bank accounts using RapidTransfer. This partnership is subject to regulatory approvals. Nairametrics
EDITOR'S NOTE
We previously reported that Alipay partnered with World Remit in Issue 39. It's interesting to see all the moves Alipay is making in the remittance industry.
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.
Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) reports a decline in mobile money tax revenue. Doris Akol, head of the URA, has reported a significant loss in tax revenue estimated at Ush30.5 billion (~ $8.17m) as Ugandans have made the shift from mobile money to agency banking. This comes after the URA imposed a 0.5% tax on mobile money withdrawals in 2018. Mobile Money Africa
