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These innovative fintech start-ups are going all in on Africa

These innovative fintech start-ups are going all in on Africa
Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s head of product and solutions for Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, delivers a speech on artificial intelligence at the Visa Accelerator Programme Demo Day on 2 December in Cape Town. Photos: Kim van Zyl Photography
Marthinus Botes
By Marthinus Botes
9 Dec 2024
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At the recent Visa Accelerator Demo Day, one thing became abundantly clear: African problems require African fintech solutions.

Africa represents a large opportunity for the fintech industry. Some fintech start-ups have tried to tap into this market by addressing financial challenges specific to Africa, such as a lack of access to credit, uncertainty in trade and illiteracy.

Four fintech start-ups featured at the Visa Accelerator Programme Demo Day, held in Cape Town on 2 December, caught our eye:

Healthcare financing


CheckUps is a healthcare benefits trading platform that is tailored to address the problem of healthcare financing in Kenya by allowing healthcare benefits to be bought digitally.

“Seventy-eight percent of Kenya’s banked account holders do not have healthcare insurance,” said Renée Ngamau, the president and cofounder of CheckUps.

“Last year alone, $500-million was borrowed from informal sectors by account holders to pay for healthcare. It makes no sense – banks are losing out on lucrative opportunities to lend,” she said.

The problem is not that Kenyans are too poor for healthcare, said Ngamau, but that they lack the proper financial service to access it. CheckUps allows customers to borrow money, pay that money to the company’s platform, and then allow selected beneficiaries to redeem healthcare benefits.

The existence of the sizeable Kenyan diaspora living around the world is baked into CheckUps’ design: the service allows foreign currency to be automatically exchanged, and for healthcare benefits to be shared and redeemed across borders.

Cross-border trade risk


Truzo is a South African fintech start-up that seeks to expedite cross-border trade in Africa, primarily by securing and verifying trade transactions.

Working as an importer or exporter in Africa is risky business, said Truzo’s founder and CEO, Terence Naidu. If you pay upfront for a delivery that never arrives, or if you never receive payment for a product that you delivered, it could mean the end of your business.

“When transacting, Truzo, as an independent third party, holds the buyer’s funds securely and only releases payment to the seller or service provider on confirmed delivery of the product,” he said.

Illiteracy and an untapped market


ProXalys, founded by Senegalese entrepreneur Thierno Sakho, is a fintech start-up that is trying to pierce one of the largest untapped digital finance markets on the continent: those who are illiterate. The inability to read or write typically leads to a sense of distrust of digital banking, and an unwillingness to switch from working almost solely with cash. This, in turn, bars them from financial services and credit, he said.

ProXalys incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) into its banking, which can read and write text for those who are unable to do so themselves. Users can speak into the app or take photos to input financial data.

Synapse Analytics, based in Egypt, also uses AI to give more people access to credit by providing software that can help banks to develop their credit policies.

fintech Godfrey Sullivan, Visa’s head of product and solutions for Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, delivers a speech on artificial intelligence at the Visa Accelerator Programme Demo Day in Cape Town on 2 December 2024. (Photo: Kim van Zyl Photography)



“Financial institutions are facing a problem: the world is changing, much faster than they are,” said the founder and chief executive of Synapse Analytics, Ahmed Abaza.

“Their methodologies are not just exclusionary and inefficient – they are actually creating a massive credit gap of more than $3-trillion and pushing more than two billion people out of the financial system.”

An AI credit solution


Armed with AI developments and Konan, a modular AI program designed to handle credit and manage risk, Synapse Analytics allows credit officers to design and deploy credit policies without much technical training. This gives banks access to a larger market of credit-seekers while maintaining low risk, said Abaza.

Fintech start-ups in South Africa

Compared with other parts of Africa, South Africa doesn’t seem like much of a hotspot for fintech start-ups, but the country’s banking regulations aren’t necessarily to blame, Visa’s head of fintech for sub-Saharan Africa, Meagan Rabe, told Daily Maverick.

“We’ve got a very mature banking sector,” she said.

“In other markets, banks are very open to fintechs because they haven’t necessarily penetrated the market very well,” she said.

Banks in South Africa have already invested in digital banking and are less incentivised to jump through the necessary hoops to certify fintech start-ups. The same is not true for other African countries, where fintech companies often help banks to digitise.

With regard to banking digitisation, many African countries find themselves at the same point where South Africa found itself decades ago, said Rabe. DM

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