The fintech startup industry in the West of Africa has rapidly become a dominant force in the continent’s technology landscape. As a significant contributor to technological development on the continent, this industry continues to grow at a blistering pace.
With the industry showing no signs of slowing down, several companies are spearheading groundbreaking innovations in payment and banking services in West Africa. These startups are at the forefront of the financial revolution, unlocking new opportunities and enhancing access to financial services for millions of Africans in the regions they serve.
Here are fifteen fintech startups redefining the financial services industry and driving change by leveraging technology to provide customers with inclusive, efficient, and secure solutions.
Touch and Pay
Year Founded: 2017
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
In a country where fintech companies are constantly competing for supremacy, Touch and Pay is gradually making a name for itself. By digitizing microtransactions, the company is deploying solutions that address everyday problems for Nigerians.
Touch and pay is a payment solutions provider that allows users to easily access and pay for services. The company operates a near-field communication (NFC) based payment platform for microtransactions such as fare payments and ticketing charges. Its products, the Cowry app and Cowry card help users seamlessly pay for services while on the go.
Touch and pay serves clients in the transportation, healthcare, events, education, and identity management sector. Touch and Pay’s solution has massively influenced transportation in Lagos Nigeria. The company has convinced approximately 1.5 million commuters in Lagos to adopt cashless rides and instead use its cowry card to pay BRT bus fares
SecondSTAX
Year Founded: 2020
Location: Accra, Ghana
SecondSTAX is a Ghanaian company operating Africa’s first cross-border smart order management and execution system for investment firms. The startup’s digital solution is a secondary securities trading and aggregation exchange that enables investors to facilitate intra-continental capital market transactions.
SecondSTAX uses an equity gateway to consolidate debt and equity capital markets across Africa and improve users’ access to opportunities in relevant markets. Essentially, the company’s platform allows users to trade securities on various African bond and stock exchanges.
With time, SecondSTAX has been able to synthesize the fragmented African Stock and Bond markets. Through its consistency in serving clients, SecondSTAX is establishing itself as a maverick in the investment and securities trading industry.
Diool
Year Founded: 2015
Location: Douala, Cameroon
Diool is a digital payments platform based in Cameroon that develops accessible banking and payment solutions for individuals and businesses across the country.
The company offers a range of payment options, including card payments, mobile money transfers, and bill payments. The company also offers merchant services, which allow businesses to accept payments from a variety of sources and conduct their transactions through a single interface, saving time and money.
Diool partners with MTN’s MoMo and Orange Money to facilitate mobile payments. They have also secured the patronage of notable organizations such as FIBA, GICAM, and GOSPORT.
The company originally started as a mobile recharge project which offers an avenue for small merchants to sell prepaid airtime to customers digitally. But it has since pivoted into financial services aggregation to address a primary pain point of users ; payment interchanges
Mono
Year Founded; 2020
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Mono is a technology company on a mission to power the digital economy in Africa, using open banking as a layer for financial data, identity data, and bank transfer payments for businesses.
Mono develops APIs and platforms that enable businesses to quickly and securely access financial data, initiate direct bank payments, and verify identity.
Over the last two years, Mono has doubled down on providing value for clients, developers and businesses across Africa; an effort which has seen them expand their services into Kenya and launch several initiatives to cater to their users’ needs.
Indicina
Year Founded: 2018
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Indicina is a venture-funded financial services company leveraging technology to enable credit providers, MFIs, and businesses to make smart lending decisions. The company aims to bridge the credit gap in Africa by making it easy for credit financiers to offer loan facilities and for borrowers to access them.
Indicina primarily serves as a credit underwriter, enabling features on its platform that give lenders premium credit information, financial analytics tools, and other digital setups they need to de-risk unsecured loans.
The company also implements AI and Machine learning mechanisms on its platform to help credit providers offer risk and hassle-free credit to their customers. Primarily, Indiciner’s digital solution makes it possible for businesses to offer credit to customers faster, more securely, and at scale.
Julaya
Year Founded: 2018
Location: Côte D’Ivoire
Julaya is a B2B digital payments services provider that was developed to streamline trade and payments for companies. Mobile money services across sub-Saharan Africa have largely been dominated by telecom operators. However, Julaya is changing that narrative; remodeling the mobile money experience for customers and businesses.
Julaya’s primary product includes a web and mobile digital framework through which businesses and institutions can disburse employee remunerations and other bulk payments via mobile money channels.
Julaya’s solution has helped several companies digitize their payments to unbanked workers and clients, thereby improving their operational efficiency. One such notable organization is Africa’s e-commerce giant Jumia which uses Julaya’s digital platform to pay partners and receive payments.
Duplo
Year Founded: 2021
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Duplo is a B2B payment services provider streamlining complex back-office financial management and payment operations for businesses. The company seeks to make it easy for vendors to pay each other and it implements automation technology to facilitate that
Duplo also aims to reduce heavy reliance on cash which is often susceptible to inefficiencies, fraud, and reconciliatory problems for businesses. Instead, it is creating a solution to enable all users to seamlessly generate invoices and offer customers efficient payment options.
Duplos’ primary offering is an end-to-end digital solution that includes an embedded product featuring APIs and user interfaces that businesses can use to digitize their payment flows.
The company primarily targets distributors, merchants, and aggregators. Duplo intends for businesses in these categories to create unique virtual accounts for their clients so they can make real-time payments which the system will reconcile immediately.
Grey
Year Founded: 2020
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Grey is a payment solution setup developed by Aboki Africa Inc to enable Africans to receive and convert foreign currencies effortlessly. Several African freelancers and digital nomads deal with similar problems when receiving payments from their foreign employers. They get paid in foreign currencies which they can’t receive directly into their local bank accounts.
Grey seeks to address this problem by enabling Africans to own and receive FX in personal USD, EUR, and GBP accounts. In addition, they also provide FX conversion services, so users don’t need to worry about how they’ll change their funds to the local currencies and deposit them in their local bank accounts.
Grey facilitates all these services via a web-based platform. Users simply need to sign up and submit some crucial information about themselves and they’ll get a fully functional foreign bank account within 24 hours.
The company currently operates in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda, allowing users in these countries to receive foreign payments from 88 different countries using USD, GBP, and EUR.
Bizao
Year Founded: 2019
Location: Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire
Bizao is a Fintech startup developed to serve African communities. The company is on a mission to enable local and international businesses to digitize payments and grow faster.
The company operates a digital payment infrastructure that facilitates the integration of mobile money, bank cards, and phone credit as payment methods. The platform currently processes over 350 million requests per month.
While Bizao provides traditional digital financial services, its uniqueness lies in its concerted effort towards extending getting to underserved areas in Africa.
Francophone Africa doesn’t get much attention in discussions around Fintech startups on the continent. While there are numerous payment startups in Nigeria and Ghana, the french speaking parts of the West African region seem to be underserved in this regard. Bizao is continually striving to rectify this problem. And it has been able to achieve a lot in its efforts thanks to funding support from investors.
Anchor
Year Founded: 2021
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Anchor is a Fintech company serving financial institutions and businesses in Africa with its banking-as-a-service platform. The company provides a complete infrastructure for businesses to develop, embed and launch financial products.
Anchor makes it possible for companies to offer tailored banking products to their customers without worrying about compliance, back-end infrastructure, or bank relationships. Anchor handles all of that, clients need only to build and launch products with minimal coding required.
Anchor is on a mission to expand financial services for Africans. Their products are geared towards enabling organizations to offer simple and contextual financial products to their customers.
Kippa
Yeah Founded: 2021
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Kippa is a Fintech company improving operational efficiency for small businesses across Nigeria through its digital financial management and payments infrastructure.
Kippa operates an all-in-one account management platform where users can do everything from simple bookkeeping to banking services such as cash withdrawals and deposits, bills and utility payments as well as account creation and management.
Kippa’s platform is a consolidated solution catering to the user’s every banking, account management, and business need. Interestingly, the app has a feature that allows small businesses to get formally registered and incorporated.
Primarily, Kippa is striving to make life easier for clients by giving them a single solution to all their business management needs. The company keeps integrating features in its platform to facilitate increased functionality and wider coverage for customers.
KrediBank
Year Founded: 2021
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Kredibank is a Neobank providing a suite of financial services to give consumers a smoother digital banking experience. Kredibank operates a digital financial solutions platform where the average Nigerian consumer can access several diverse financial services in one consolidated framework.
Addressing the fragmented nature of digital financial services in Nigeria, Kredibank aims to give users easy access to banking and financial products such as savings, loans, bills payment, investments, Agency banking, and insurance in one place.
What sets Kredibank apart from other Neobanks coming out of Nigeria is its core business model that’s focused on mobilizing deposit, investment, and credit facilities instead of a payment services-driven model.
Pastel
Year Founded: 2021
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Formerly known as Sabi Cash, Pastel is a financial services provider helping small and medium businesses in Africa to digitize their operations. The company targets traditional retail merchants with digital solutions designed to help them process payments, increase sales and improve operational efficiency.
Pastel’s digital infrastructure features three primary products including bookkeeping (Sabi bookkeeping), payment services (Swift Money), and Invoicing solution software (Swift Receipt).
Sabi Bookkeeping helps users track cash flows, manage their relationship with customers and keep tabs on buyers owing them. Swift Cash features functionalities that enable users to manage payments, access financing from local savings groups, and eliminate loopholes in their financial processes. Swift Receipt provides users with simple invoicing tools, letting them generate numerous receipts conveniently.
While Pastel isn’t the only company providing these services in Nigeria, the company’s model of decentralizing its products sets it apart from others who bundle several products into one software.
Bitmama
Year Founded: 2017
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Bitmama is a financial services company redefining the way people conduct financial transactions using blockchain technology. It operates a crypto-fiat exchange platform where individual users can buy, sell and stake Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets.
Bitmama originally started as a Whatsapp group where members learned about cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Then it pivoted to facilitating P2P digital currency trading before developing a platform to enable individuals exchange and manage cryptocurrencies and other digital assets conveniently
It also operates a social payment solution (Changera) which allows customers to pay bills and make online purchases using stablecoins. They introduced this product as a solution to the problem caused by the limit on Nigerian local bank cards. With Changera, users can conduct online transactions as high as $10,000 monthly from anywhere in the world.
Seerbit
Year Founded:2019
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Seerbit is a pan-African financial solutions provider helping businesses accept and process payments online and offline. The company operates a platform that facilitates seamless, easy, fast, and secure payment for users. Using Seerbit’s platform, SMEs and enterprises can process broad and inclusive online and offline payments.
Seerbit is on a mission to help African businesses circumvent payment barriers such as internet unavailability and lack of access to digital payment services. To that end, the company has deployed a range of online and offline payment methods to cater to every business’s needs.
In a saturated Nigeria Fintech industry, Seerbit’s uniqueness lies in its efforts to tailor their solutions to the average customer’s needs. Instead of simply throwing out a bouquet of solutions, the company curates payment options and strives to give each customer exactly what they need.
