What in the Digital is going on in the Kenyan Fintech space plus other stories affecting Money flow around Africa.

Hello Fintech Fans, Welcome to another week.

It's the 3rd week in 2023, Is it just us or does it seem January is moving quite fast? So....what happened in African Fintech last week? We are glad you asked! We've prepped a steaming platter of the good, the wow! and the spicy to keep you informed and abreast of the trends in our ecosystem.

Lets take a look.

• Starting off with Nigeria - A lot of the reports connected the Nigerian Financial space with the UK. TeamApt rebranded to Moniepoint and moved its headquarters to the UK. Reasons seem obvious for growth; operating from that international centre will surely give their business access to global opportunities

• Next up , we hear one of the Fintech unicorns, Flutterwave, is eyeing the acquisition of the UK-based Railsr. This is a developing story but is nonetheless interesting.

• African economies are no strangers to currency devaluation; The Nigerian Naira and Ghanian Cedis have tales for days. This week the Egyptian pound weakened to a new low trading at 32 to a dollar. The recent plummet is by 13%, and is causing serious treasury concerns for cross-border transactions.

• For our deep dive this week, we couldn't resist focusing on the Kenyan Fintech space. So much is happening there and we'll like to unpack that for you.

Last in this segment, we share an updated infographic of the Nigerian Fintech Ecosystem by the remarkable Segun Adeyemi who has done this year on year for a while.

If you like what you have read so far, please subscribe, share, get a cup of coffee and let's do a deep dive next.

Kenya and Its concerted Move to building a Digital Nation.

We start this segment with some important statistics. The Fintech sector leads the Kenyan Startup space according to a Disrupt Africa report. Out of the 308 Kenyan Startups, 93 are Fintechs. Also, this sector raked in Sh135.8 billion in investments in 2022, so it is definitely a sector to watch.

So all this would have been just numbers except you start plotting recent data points.

• Just before the new year, the Government rolled out a digital payment platform for all government services. This includes a web-based as well as a USSD-based system that will streamline the payment process in various government ministries and state agencies.

What does this mean - We are about to experience an explosion in digital payments transactions in Kenya. Did we mention 13 different services from business registration to construction permits and transport services are supported?

• Then we are still taking this in, the Revenue Authority announces 15% tax on betting, gaming and lottery as well as the 20% WHT on winnings collected from punters daily. Wait a min.. what figures are we looking at? With the Treasury projecting to collect Sh15 billion from betting this 2023, this means that KRA targets to earn Sh41.1 million from betting firms every day. Read again... every day

Just so this is not looking like a single story, Safaricom revealed that punters pushed Sh169 billion through M-Pesa to bet in the year ended March, translating to Sh469 million per day. I hope some Apex Bank governors of some African nations are not reading this, because..

• I don't know about you, but this feels like a squeeze on the people of Kenya, especially since the CBK recently reversed the waiver on fees for M-Pesa transactions. You might recall these fees were removed as part of the economic buffers during the Covid lockdown

Thankfully, the banks have seized this opportunity to offer their own mobile money products and hopefully break the age-long dominance of M-Pesa. We'll see how this goes.

What are the opportunities?

1. Digital Payments create a different set of jobs for operators, service providers and infrastructure owners.

2. Fintechs looking to come into Kenya need to revisit their Payment method strategy as well as look at new partnerships.

3. Traditionally Fintech services have been focused on consumers, the 13 services digitized by the government offer an opportunity for Startups to look into the B2B sector. As we know, Payments are just the last mile, the value paid for has to be captured virtually first.

4. There is also the opportunity for ancillary services like onboarding & identity, distribution, fulfillment, and security to make things work smoothly.

So back to the numbers we cited in our initial analysis, it is safe to say Fintechs in Kenya will still lead the Startup space as these opportunities open more business.

What do you make of these events, and what opportunities do you see? Let's discuss this in our Payments community on slack.

News Highlights across the African continent.

From the 54 countries in the culture-rich of African continent, we bring you the African Fintech News Highlights of the week ending on the 15th of Jan 2023.

A few things are important to spotlight from our infographic. Take a look

Events, Courses and Community news.

The Fintech Open House is back for 2023. This January we speak to the very experienced Samuel Omosuyi on best practices for building Financial Applications.

Samuel has spent over 15 years in the Banking, Payments and Fintech Ecosystem in Nigeria. He has designed, built, and deployed a number of Platforms across Fintech categories like Agency banking, Core Banking Applications, Payments API Suite, CBDC integrations and more. To register for the event and learn more, see details below.

Registration is still on for our course - Payments 360. This course was developed out of our understanding of the growth trajectory of the fintech industry and a deep knowledge of the infrastructure and processes that make things work. If you are looking for a structured way of finally understanding Fintech & Payments(Basics, Regulations, Systems, Operations, Stakeholders, Roles), especially within the African context, we strongly recommend this course. See details in the media below.

Let us be part of your Fintech learning journey in 2023.

Want to catch up on the latest news in the ecosystem, this is your spot. Check out our learning materials at The PaymentLogue.

At The PaymentLogue, we are enabling a skilled Fintech ecosystem. If you'd like to make enquiries on our courses and events, reach out to us at [email protected]

You want your Fintech Products and platforms to have an audience with an African Fintech Audience? Let us Partner. Reach out to us at [email protected] or chat with us on Whatsapp- 07025254596

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