The Next Two Pillars for Success in Africa’s Fintech Sector

Africa is moving into the next phase of the fintech universe. Yes, merely  building products and services which will enable people and companies to receive and send money will not deliver great value to stakeholders (investors, merchants, communities, users, etc). The future of African fintech will be anchored on two pillars besides the requirements of seamless transfer of funds: ecosystems for merchants and partnerships.

On the ecosystems, you must offer besides the ability to receive/send funds tools to help your customers run their business operations. And those tools include bookkeeping, invoicing, domain training, etc, adds-on. Indeed, besides helping them move money, you need to help them also make money.

For partnerships, it is hopeless thinking you can do it alone. To thrive as a fintech, you must partner with others in your sector and outside your sector. For example, you can partner with a payroll company to integrate its APIs so that your merchant can also do payroll within your platform. The same goes with specialized training which can help the merchants do better in the market. Of course, there is another dimension of partnership which involves integrating with companies in other countries to expand your reach.