A Look At African Fintechs: Solving Multiple Problems

Is there anywhere in the world more exciting for fintech companies than in many of the countries throughout Africa?

In Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa particularly (where 88% of VC investment has been targeted since 2015/ Source: Statista), fintech’s are disrupting traditional financial services and challenging incumbent service providers- not necessarily within their comfort zone.

The ever-growing populations in some African sub-Saharan regions are becoming more and more technologically able, with mobile phone penetration and smart phone ownership rates soaring.

As seen in other areas of the world, Fintech’s now stepped forward to build ‘Super-Apps’, applications that are designed to offer a wide range of services, across multiple categories.

A recent example in Europe is the news that Neobank Revolut has stepped into the travel industry, with Revolut Stays offering clients the ability to book hotels across the world through their app.

Companies such as this are looking to solve many of their users’ problems so that they only really need to use their service rather than look anywhere else.

It is these companies that are leaving the biggest marks in the space, with great success stories such as the recent $170 million Series C round by Flutterwave. Flutterwave, the African-focused payment tech company looks to satisfy not just payments, but banking and credit also. Businesses that can scale vertically and geographically are the ones that will thrive.

At Equiti Group (EGM Securities/ FXPesa), we also strive to ensure that our clients are happy with operating with us for their whole journey to financial freedom. What does this mean? In traction, our thousands upon thousands of clients want fair value on their trading transactional costs, ease of onboarding, depositing and withdrawals, and trading platforms with best-in-class user experience.

But there is so much more. Our clients need to seek the best returns, so we offer access to global markets (such as U.S equities) and we are truly multi-asset. Clients can trade Foreign Exchange, Contract for Difference (CFDs) on hundreds of products, and trade Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) stock futures.

Many of our Kenyan clients, for example, are diversifying their trading seamlessly across products such as Safaricom ($SCOM) and Amazon ($AMZN), whilst trading big Oil and Gold moves alongside exposure to currencies.

To complement this, last month Equiti Group launched an industry-first, fully integrated prepaid Mastercard for flawless payments. Linking these cards to our clients’ trading accounts makes the entire funding process smooth.

This whole ecosystem is supported by education for all levels of investors, with our team of analysts pumping our content daily across various channels such as Twitter, Facebook, seminars, podcasts, and Telegram. We are working relentlessly for our new and existing clients and have some incredibly exciting new initiatives coming down the pipe very soon.

The Fintech industry is just getting started across many countries in Africa. I keep arguing that we are at the beginning of a truly special point in time on the continent- a moment where those companies that have the right culture and thirst for innovation will attract millions of knowledgeable clients keen to form long-lasting relationships with those that evolve and solve their ever-changing wants and needs. No, there is nowhere in the world more exciting than Africa for the Fintech industry right now.

By  Equiti Brokerage CEO Brian Myers (@brian_equiti on Twitter)