Five solutions built for African financial services.

What problems does it solve

For most players, building a payment platform is a complex and lengthy journey of assembling several different components — routing solutions, acquiring solutions, processor integrations, scheme integrations, certifications — all resulting in:

• High upfront and recurring costs for large maintenance teams, licensing and other costs
• Long implementation timelines
• Multiple points of failure
• Technology becomes the business, to the detriment of business

What problems does it solve

SMEs are the fastest growing revenue segment and a critical sector for economic growth but remain the least penetrated sector for lenders.

• Most lending solutions on the market are focused on underwriting, and are designed either for consumers or corporates, leaving SMEs as an unaddressed missing middle
• Fragmented landscape of solutions that focus separately on risk scoring and underwriting, workbenches for middle and back-office operations, or front-end journeys

What problems does it solve

The credit crisis, technological advances and data explosion have led to tectonic shifts in financial services in the last decade. Regulations have evolved and increased to make financial institutions more resilient and adapt to the rapid pace of innovation and alternative models. The number of licences, licensed entities, compliance and reporting requirements have all increased significantly.

• Regulators now have more institutions, each with more reporting and compliance requirements to monitor, and are unable to scale up human resources quickly enough
• Regulated entities are struggling to keep up

What problems does it solve

Trade as a product is mostly an LC-issuance business rather than a trade facilitation solution. It puts onerous demands on traders in and with African markets. Despite advances in underlying cross-border payments solutions, trade remains unimagined as an end-to-end trader journey.

• Current product structure does not support scale: manual document verification and confirmation
• Millions of small traders cannot access trade finance due to complexity, duration and cost

What problems does it solve

Nearly all leading banks and financial institutions in Africa import the critical technology that powers their business from outside Africa. This translates to huge and rising costs as banking becomes increasingly tech-driven, complex implementations and talent gaps. Significant functionality gaps are filled by yet more tech imports, as the largest providers of bank tech build primarily for other markets and then adapt to Africa.

• Limited relevance to key areas of growth for banking in Africa, including SME and unsecured lending
• Module misalignment: advanced functionality on features hardly used in Africa, and little progress on areas of advancement for Africa, such as real-time payments and mobile banking