The Trifecta of Expansion, Compliance & Partnerships plus The Tea on Malawi .

Habari za asubuhi Fintechies.

I hope you've started this week on a good note. This is the week of Valentine's and we are sending you all the love and good vibes. 💝

Let's start off with some fun facts about Africa 🌍, as there is so much to learn about this wonderful continent. Do you know Africa is 1 of the 2 continents which has a country in a country?

Inside the country of South Africa, is Lesotho - a democratic, sovereign, and independent country with the unique characteristic of being totally surrounded by its neighbor, the Republic of South Africa. The country formerly known as Basutoland was renamed to the Kingdom of Lesotho upon independence from the UK in 1966.

Tell the truth... you read that for the 1st time here right, right?😆

We have 3 riveting sections for you in this newsletter. We'll bring the news highlights first, followed by updates from our School of Fintech and Slack community, then we move to the Deep dive. Shall we?

The News Highlights.

It's official -the African Fintech slogan for the year is Compliance, Expansion and Partnership. Perhaps this trifecta is just what we need to usher in new growth, new funding and the end of the funding winter. Let's dig in and see

#Compliance:   More Fintechs are exploring compliance as the year unfolds. To be honest, most of these moves started in 2022 and are just crystallising in 2023. This week Ceviant and Bamboo investment clinched licenses in Nigeria. Zeepay from Ghana copped a Mobile money license in Gambia. Pezesha from Kenya also received a Digital Lending License from the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA).

#Flutterwave : You thought we fluttered out of that section without mentioning Flutterwave right? Nah... Whatever the African Unicorn is drinking these days, it should be patented! Flutterwave was on another high this week copping not one but 2! licenses in Egypt. Also in a positive turn of events , they were cleared of the money laundering charges in Kenya. Way to go !🥂 We hear an IPO is in the works, fingers crossed people.. fingers 🤞.

#Expansion & Partnerships; We'll review partnerships and expansion news together cos they are like Siamese twins. Well almost.

For cross border transactions, Naijagram partnered with Tempo France, a French licensed, Paris-based, European-wide anchor for Stellar blockchain payments. They plan to facilitate remittances from the EU to 20 African countries, now that is a big deal! In another cross border move Cellulant partnered with Money Q from Dubai to enable the African immigrants there pay for Airtime and Bills back home. This will be done via Money Q's KrosPayz wallet system.

The partnership will leverage Money Q’s digital wallet platform, KrosPayz, which is expected to go live in Malawi in April this year.

#The Tea on Malawi : Malawi was the first country in Africa to grow tea on a commercial scale and the second largest exporter after Kenya. They have a population of 20M, about the size of Lagos. Their adult population is about 50% of that and are listed as the Fourth poorest in Africa.

However Malawi has appeared in the news for a bit this year, it's useful to draw the curtains aside a little and take a closer look at this country.

Earlier in the year, the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) issued the Pan-African payment Unicorn Chipper Cash, a license to provide money transfer Value Added Services in Malawi.

Cross-border transfer Fintech, Mama Money, partnered with TNM, the leading telecommunications and mobile money operator in Malawi. This partnership unlocks 40,000 cashout locations across Malawi. The customers also enjoy these services at 0 fees.🔥

We'll keep an eye on their growing Fintech prowess as well as their lovely tea 🍵.

Looking for a TLDR; see our news highlight infographic below.

Updates from our community of Fintech Intellectuals

We held another community session last weekend. We shared thoughts on the new Domestic card scheme and its implications on our ecosystem.

A community member who attended the virtual launch shared notes and we discussed different things like the effect on Financial Inclusion and what we could learn from the Indian implementation. Join the community to vote ❎ and influence what we should discuss next.

School of Fintech

Holla Fintech CTOs, Engineering Managers , Solution Architects , Software Engineers/Developers, & Technical Product Managers. This will interest you 👇

📌Did you just lose developers to a Japa move , and you have a new batch to train?

📌Do you often deal with buggy deployments on your Fintech platforms?

📌Do you have downtime when your Fintech transactions increase?

📌Does your Product team have difficulties communicating features to Engineers in a way they understand?

📌Do you often deal with buggy deployments on your Fintech platforms?

📌Are you a new Fintech building out your Tech team and you need them to have Payments Domain training?

If you've been looking for answers to these questions, save your organisation time and headache by jumping on our Practical Bootcamp Fintech Engineering course. It features a capstone project focused on coding a Fintech Wallet. Yes!!

Mail us at [email protected] to join the waitlist and get other details. We have 15 slots only for this class, as it is practical and each participant needs attention from our facilitators.

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

Sponsored Posts

What are we reading this week?

Looking for a global overview of the state of the Industry in 2022? CBInsights does a fantastic job at this especially their coverage of investments and funding. Grab a copy for free on their website or check the slack channel for infographics for a link.

Interesting facts about Fintech Regulatory Sandboxes.

A regulatory sandbox is a set of guidelines, policies and infrastructure that forms a support structure enabling innovators to conduct controlled tests under a regulator’s supervision.

4 different kinds of sandboxes have been identified:

(a) Policy focused

(b) Cross-border

(c) Product/innovation led and

(d) Thematic.

In 2015, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), of the UK implemented the first regulatory sandbox to assist in managing the products of emerging financial technologies. Afterwards various national and subnational financial regulators have followed suit in establishing fintech sandboxes for demonstrating emerging tech such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.

So is there any usefulness to this program or is it a ploy for regulators to play Big brother to the Fintechs. See some advantages:

• They encourage innovation by creating a safe space for firms explore innovation without wondering if they are within Regulatory guardrails.

• They increase interaction between regulators and innovative firms while keeping the regulators informed so they can create more inclusive regulation.

• They ensure consumers’ rights remain protected as regulators keep a watchful eye on the process verifying that products are consumer-friendly and secure.

• They enable growth by helping fintechs identify and develop new opportunities to offer product or service to.

• They help facilitate partnerships between fintech Startups and already existing traditional financial companies.

An eponymous organisation exists though : Fintech Sandbox , they are a non-profit that drives global FinTech innovation and collaboration. Currently they have over 40 partners, 200+ Startups and about 9,000 Community members. They do not require fees or equity, instead they run a 6-month program providing access to data feeds and APIs from partners, cloud hosting etc. Their focus is to facilitate shared learning and collaboration within the community of FinTech professionals.

Now let's move to Africa. About 7 countries have atleast one implementation of regulatory sandboxes. We highlight 4 below.

Next we highlight a use case showing the impact of a regulatory sandbox in Thailand.

Though Fintech sandboxes seem useful, it has been noted that regulatory sandboxes are not always an optimal instrument for regulatory problems in fintech or beyond. Organisations like FSD Africa have recommended that Innovation Offices, as they appear to be more conducive to building stronger relationships or networks with the FinTech sector.

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]

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