African Fintechs get Unbelievably Liquid 🤑to end August in style 🏎️.
+ Nala's impressive expansion Trajectory | Vol 38 | Aug 28th, 2023
Last week in African Fintech was all about the money, if we could put a theme it would be the quote in the popular 1996 Rom-com - Jerry Maguire
So what moves are we referring to?
Fintechs announcing Fund raises.
Fintechs acquiring Fintechs.
Fintechs investing in Mega Movies and Countries.
What else are we going to discuss?
📌 Nala’s strategic expansion moves in 2023.
📌 And as usual, The Weekly roundup in a shareable infographic.
First, what does this mean👉🏽 Unbelievably liquid 😁
If you are new to Nigerian X ( sorry Twitter), you might not know this trended a few weeks ago. Ezra Olubi, Paystack’s Co-founder made this phrase popular when he innocently shared about his money-saving habits which earned him deep financial flexibility ( see screenshot below).
Not long after, it became a trend complete with Merch and prayer points. Many accounts have changed their handle to Unbelievably liquid. If you doubt me, do a quick search on Twitter ( sorry X) 🌀😩.
So how did Fintechs show their deep Financial Flexibility last week?
⛳FUNDING
After $0 USD was recorded in the upper week, African Fintechs rose from a drought to announce a total of $44.2M USD in Funding. See the details.
LemFi: Lemfi recently rebranded their name from Lemonade Finance to embody the spirit of “No Borders, No Barriers and no BS”. They enable remittances from the UK, US, and Canada to over 12 African countries. They recently raised $33M USD to advance this purpose.
Zanifu: Zanifu is a Kenyan-based Fintech that provides inventory financing for MSMEs. If you’ve been following our trends for Fintech funding, it will not surprise you that they’ve raised $11.2M USD in a Funding winter.
⛳ACQUISITION
First, it was a rumour and then a whisper, but it has now been confirmed that MoniePoint is expanding its territory to Kenya by acquiring 100% of Payment Fintech - Kopo Kopo.
Kopo Kopo is a Kenyan-focused Fintech that enables businesses to accept digital payments whilst providing access to credit. You’d recall that Moniepoint also recently started offering working capital to their Nigerian Merchants.
The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) recently gave approval for the sale signifying the deal is above $7M USD, though the real amount is undisclosed.
⛳INVESTMENTS
Next, we move to another category of Money flows - Investments 💰💰💰
Network International, a digital payments giant in the MEA region, has announced an EGP 1bn investment to support Egypt’s payment ecosystem. The investment will focus on 3 areas.
1st, Network International will upgrade its payment technology and capabilities in Egypt to facilitate the shift from cash to digital payments.
Also, a large part of the investment will be allocated to acquiring, installing, and maintaining about 100,000 advanced POS machines.
Then the rest of the investment will be directed to the implementation and smooth operation of Network One, Network’s state-of-the-art payments technology platform.
When I say Unbelievably!! , you say Liquid!!.. I loveet!!😁
To end this, we look at how the Big Boys and Girls of African Fintech came together to fund a movie that holds the ‘record for the highest budget ever seen in Nigerian cinema‘ - The Black Book.
Recognize any names in the credits below? Now just scroll up again and re-read the definition of Unbelievably Liquid. ( Ok, I won’t bother you again😏.)
Unpacking Nala’s Fintech Expansion Playbook 💼
NALA is a Tanzania-born, African payments and money transfer app that enables you to make payments from Europe, the UK, and US to Africa in seconds.
They are on a mission to increase economic opportunity in Africa and among its diaspora and have raised $10.2 million so far.
Why are we spotlighting Nala today?
They’ve come up in our trends list for a focused execution of their expansion strategy. They started off the year( well late Dec 2022) announcing their expansion to Europe and since then have launched in Kenya, received a license in Tanzania, and lately announced a big move to Nigeria!
Let’s unpack the Nigerian expansion a bit, as it would seem it is a really bad time for a cross-border app to move into Nigeria.
Why? The Fx rates are at an all-time erratic state as the government recently floated the naira. Also, the absence of naira cards for international payments increased the addressable market for Remittance apps, but all that is eroded as they are back in use. It is rumoured that Fintechs in that space are feeling early pinches.
But this is what Nala could have as an edge.⤵️
The remittance business works best when there is a balance of currency flow; Inbound and Outbound. From their spread in Europe, they have enough inflow to balance the demand from the Nigerian market. So it might just be a juicy move for them( fingers crossed for policy changes 🤞🏽)
How do you think they’ll do in Nigeria? Where do you think they’ll be headed next? Let us know in the comments.
🔻⤵️ How to reduce your Fintech Ops Headache
Speaking about Money moves, one of the best ways to earn more profits is to plug leakages and ensure proper monitoring of the flow of money.
Our Seamless Operations course helps your team learn the following essential skills for managing back-office operations: 👇🏼
We break down how to design operations for various Payment products: Account product Ops differ from Card product Ops.
Best practices for effective Operations when your platform supports multiple partners and payment methods.
You'll understand the flow of money, the settlement stakeholders, and the systems involved.
We show you how to set up a chart of accounts, settlements, and integration types with parameters you should consider to ease Recon and Disputes.
To learn more and register, click here:
The Weekly Roundup
Finally, on today’s dashboard, we’ve selected the top 7 headlines that made the most impact, take a look 👇🏽.
And that is all for this week’s newsletter. If you found this informative, please subscribe, comment, and share in your Fintech circle. Have an awesome week!