What next for Africa's fintech start-ups?

According to attendees of the recent Africa Technology Summit (ATS), hosted by the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) there is still space for more startups to launch within the African fintech space.

It was highlighted that there are a number of new accelerators and VC funds specifically targeting innovations in the space but, according to the panellists, there is still plenty of room for more companies to enter the scene.

Bunmi Akinyemiju, chief executive officer (CEO) of Venture Garden Group, a holding company for a group of different fintech entities, said: “Point of sale is changing very fast, especially on mobile, giving the merchant options to make more money.

“We think with time there will be a person on every corner of the street with an agent, for you to be able to do business the old way, but in a way that is very effective and innovative,” he said.

Vahid Monadjem, CEO of South Africa-based enterprise payments platform provider Nomanini, said: “We need more collaborations to grow because our services are quite unique from each other.”

Akinyemiju added: “It is about trust and if it is so fragmented as it now it limits the success rates. The other side is you need to pay from various sources, so the coexistence of these players being able to communicate with their systems fosters the ecosystem because transactions happen on different platforms.”

“We mostly think about the consumer side but there is a big space for B2B and we would like to see more innovations coming up in these areas,” he said.

Saqib Nazir, CEO of electronic payments platform Interpay Africa, said: “Creating a solution for people to accept payments quickly to enable transactions and commerce to happen. That is where we see the trends.

“A lot of payments are already in digital format, especially remittances. The challenge is in the transactions from person-to-person and the daily demands of commerce, Most of them are in cash and getting it into digital is a growing area.”

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SOURCE: [Disrupt Africa]