FinTech Companies to Uplift Africa’s Offline and Digital Payments

The Covid-19 pandemic paved the way for a comprehensive technological adoption to push digital payments platforms to reach thousands, if not millions, of users in Africa, with the adoption of contactless means to conduct transactions.

What was once perceived as a luxury for making payments now has become a necessity for the sustainability of Africa’s financial sector, more specifically, the continent’s technological, financial sector (FinTech)

Since 2010, Africa has always been at the lead in the payments space mobilized by digital money services. Now, while the pandemic did indeed change digital innovations’ tides, one factor that was significantly affected by Covid-19 was the adoption of digital payments.

Africa’s embrace of digital payments in many industries, demographics, and payment services, and some companies are seeking to drive the continent’s innovations, spreading growth across more than 35 African countries. 

African power is accelerating the modernization of digital payments on a global, regional, and local scale to develop a much more incorporated connection in the continent’s countries, such as South Africa, Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and much more. 

Earlier this year, the GSMA Association released a report demonstrating how mobile money accounts increased by 43 percent, growing to hit 1.2 billion users, all from African regions. The Year-over-Year (YoY) growth rate highlights the market’s capacity in obtaining offline payments is much more monumental than that of online payments.

This will structure the path for upcoming plans to empower the continent’s offline payments while synchronizing focus on emboldening online payment services. 

In parallel, the report also showed that in the sub-Saharan Africa region alone, almost 44 million enterprises of all sizes and influence are investing their power to provide jobs that could play a fundamental role in serving Africa’s economy and growth. Most of these firms offer to provide services or hire employees to work on offline or cash payments.

And who better to steer Africa’s digital payments ecosystem than fintech companies.

These firms are seeking out new ventures in the continent by leveraging collaborations with the various companies in the sector, be it with banks, telecom operators, and well-known enterprises, to pilot the accession of the FinTech sector in Africa.

Given that digital payment’s popularity is on an exponential rise in the region, from paying bills and accessing critical services to peer-to-peer transactions to conducting certain purchases, it will set the first stones to build the needed infrastructure for retailers and enterprises to extend their digital capacities, to accommodate people’s shift in becoming less independent on cash.