Frontier Fintech GPS #23 - March 12th 2025
Revolut eyes South Africa, Lesaka completes acquisition of Recharger; Citi, Cellulant and Visa partner for Supplier Payments and other stories that matter to you
Illustration by Mary Mogoi - Website
Hi All, Welcome to the 23rd edition of Frontier Fintech GPS where I provide key insights on the top global Fintech news items that matter to you. This newsletter will be arriving in your inboxes every Wednesday morning. The idea behind Frontier Fintech GPS is to help you navigate the endless stream of Fintech news and get smart about global Fintech as it applies to Africa. To those who are yet to subscribe, hit the subscribe button below and share with your colleagues and friends. 🚀
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Built for Local Realities
Scaling a fintech or financial institution in Africa means navigating unique regulatory, operational, and market-specific challenges. Many global core banking solutions—built with mature markets in mind—lack the flexibility to accommodate local realities. A prime example? Loan fee structures. In many African markets, lenders need the ability to amortize fees over the length of a loan—a feature that most global core banking platforms don’t natively support. Fintechs and banks are forced to rely on cumbersome workarounds or build expensive custom solutions just to meet everyday business needs.
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🇿🇦 Revolut Eyes South African Market Entry
Revolut, the world's fourth-largest digital bank, is considering launching in South Africa. Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut has evolved into a financial "super app," offering multi-currency accounts, stock and crypto trading, business banking, and lifestyle services. The potential entry could shake up South Africa’s banking sector, intensifying competition among both digital and traditional banks.
Revolut has been on a global expansion spree. One must remember that the CEO’s goal is to create a truly global financial powerhouse and takes motivation from Citi’s global corporate and trade business. In the last 12 months they’ve announced expansion into Brazil and New Zealand with intentions to launch in Canada, Mexico, India, UAE and now South Africa. What ties all those markets is that there have been successful neobank’s launched meaning that both the regulatory frameworks and market awareness exist. For Revolut, given they’ve built their entire platform in-house, then expansion means you’re monetising that tech platform over a much wider surface area.
🇿🇦 Lesaka Completes Acquisition of Recharger to Expand Prepaid Services
South African fintech Lesaka Technologies has finalized the acquisition of Recharger, a leading provider of prepaid electricity and value-added services. This move strengthens Lesaka’s position in the prepaid payments sector, enhancing its ability to serve consumers and small businesses with expanded digital payment solutions. The acquisition aligns with Lesaka’s broader strategy of driving financial inclusion by integrating essential services into its payment ecosystem.
Lesaka has over time built a very valuable payments and banking operation targeted towards lower earning South Africans. Already they have products like Kazaang, EasyPay and Adumo. Recharger supplies prepaid meters, prepaid meter vouchers and self-service systems for installing and managing the meters. These are usually sold to South African landlords who benefit from better electricity payment rates from their tenants. This acquisition in my view gives Lesaka better control of the end to end prepaid meter proposition whilst improving overall unit economics. This ideally should mean that it can pass on additional margin to their merchants particularly on Kazang.
🇰🇪 Citi Partners with Cellulant and Visa to Power Small Business Supply Chain Finance
Citi has partnered with Cellulant and Visa to enhance supply chain financing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. The collaboration will leverage Visa’s digital payment infrastructure and Cellulant’s fintech expertise to provide SMEs with seamless access to credit and improved cash flow management. This initiative aims to bridge the financing gap for businesses, enabling them to better manage working capital and expand operations.
The way this partnership is designed is that Citi will issue cards to their corporate clients who will then use them to pay their suppliers. Payments will be handled by Tingg, a product of Cellulant which can settle into banks and mobile money. My guess is that the Supply-Chain Finance (SCF) angle is based on the fact that Citi will likely layer payables finance on top of the cards. This means that corporates can make payments on what would essentially be credit cards with pre-approved limits. This is a payables product that leverages on the balance sheet of the corporate anchor that is banking with Citi. It’s a smart way to do payables given that Citi already has the relationships with the Corporate’s payables teams and they’re already educated on card usage. Citi in Kenya particularly has been at the leading edge of Corporate Fintech innovation for decades.
🇷🇼🇰🇪 Bank of Kigali and KCB Group Join Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS)
Bank of Kigali and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group have officially joined thePan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), a cross-border financial infrastructure developed by Afreximbank and theAfrican Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). PAPSS facilitates instant, secure, and cost-effective transactions across African nations, reducing reliance on international payment networks. By integrating with PAPSS, Bank of Kigali and KCB aim to enhance regional trade by enabling faster and more efficient settlements for businesses and financial institutions.
Despite PAPSS being launched in 2021, there has been little activity by banks to onboard and start offering it as a payments option to clients. I wrote about it here and argued that the challenge with platforms like PAPSS is that they tend to compete with the proprietary payment propositions that large banks offer. Large banks like Ecobank, Access Bank, Standard Bank and Equity all have internal cross-border payment propositions that technically compete with PAPSS. The fact that Bank of Kigali and KCB are both government owned points towards pressure by their respective governments to make some movements towards PAPSS.
🇳🇬 Zone Processes Naira 1 Trillion in Transactions, Strengthening Blockchain Payments in Africa
Nigerian fintech Zone, Africa’s first regulated blockchain-powered payment network, has processed over 1 trillion Naira in transactions since its launch. The company, which provides real-time settlement infrastructure for banks and fintechs, has grown rapidly by offering instant, secure, and cost-efficient payment solutions. Zone currently serves over 15 financial institutions, facilitating seamless interbank and fintech transactions while leveraging blockchain to enhance transparency and security in Africa’s payments ecosystem.
Zone is a block-chain based payments company that was formed out of the break up of Appzone into two companies. Qore which handles Core Banking Systems and Zone. Whilst Nigeria has advanced payments systems in both Nibss and Interswitch, Zone is marketing itself at the moment as a reliable and innovative payments rail that gives clients immediate settlement. The key value prop for now is late night and weekend transactions can settle instantly and banks can then give their clients higher reliability. It’s an interesting proposition but the path to mainstream adoption as a key payments rail still has some way to go.
🇳🇬 Carbon Resumes Verve Debit Card Issuance After Temporary Halt
Nigerian digital lender Carbon has resumed issuing Verve debit cards, allowing customers to access seamless digital and physical transactions. The service was temporarily suspended due to regulatory and operational adjustments, but has now been restored to ensure improved customer experience and financial accessibility. Carbon users can now request Verve debit cards for withdrawals, payments, and online transactions, reinforcing the company’s commitment to enhancing digital banking services in Nigeria.
The CEO of Carbon wrote about the move away from card issuance in his evergreen newsletter. In the newsletter he suggested that the card business will be reviewed towards operating on a card platform that has better long-term unit economics. The move towards Verve is therefore very predictable in a good way. Other Fintechs such as Palmpay and Moniepoint have also made moves towards Afrigo, another local card platform. One of the trends in Nigerian Fintechs over the last three years has been import-substitution with Fintechs choosing local vendors who bill in Naira.
🇰🇪 M-Pesa Celebrates 18 Years, Launches Investment Product
Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Africa’s leading mobile money platform, marks 18 years of service by introducing a new investment product aimed at enhancing financial inclusion. The product enables users to invest directly from their M-Pesa wallets into regulated money market funds, offering a simple and accessible way to grow savings. Since its launch in 2007, M-Pesa has expanded across multiple African markets, serving over 60 million users and processing billions of transactions annually. This latest offering is part of M-Pesa’s broader strategy to provide diverse financial services beyond payments and remittances. M-Pesa handles over 4,000 transactions per second and over 100 million transactions per day, making it Africa’s largest Fintech solution.
M-Pesa is a relatively young Fintech. Like Ant Group (21), it’s at a college going age. It looks up to elders like Visa and Mastercard which are 67 and 59 respectively. It has an older sibling in Paypal which is 27 and has plenty of younger siblings such as Stripe (15), Revolut (10) and Nubank (12). What’s impressive about M-Pesa is the scale it has achieved within less than a generation. Looking at the age of Visa and Mastercard, it’s clear that there’s still a long way to go ahead in terms of innovation and M-Pesa can argue that it’s just getting started. With an FPS on the horizon, M-Pesa will need to continue focusing on its core strengths of high availability, ubiquity, customer service, brand awareness and an extensive ground game.
🌍 Network International and Airtel Money Expand Digital Payment Solutions Across Africa
Network International has partnered with Airtel Money to enhance digital payment capabilities across 14 African countries. The collaboration will enable Airtel Money customers to make digital payments at merchants within Network International’s extensive network, increasing financial inclusion and reducing reliance on cash transactions. The partnership aims to support businesses by providing seamless payment solutions, leveraging Airtel Money’s 32 million active users and Network International’s vast merchant acceptance footprint. This move aligns with broader efforts to boost digital payments adoption across Africa’s fast-growing fintech landscape.
Telcos are proving to be key to the growth of card based payments in Africa. Who would have thought this to be the case 10 years ago when MoMo was seen as being competitive to cards? The big driver for card payments in Africa is largely around payment for digital services particularly e-commerce services on Meta Platform such as Facebook and Instagram. There’s also growing e-commerce demand for platforms like AliExpress. MoMos are well placed given their wide distribution. Airtel has a strong presence in Uganda, DRC, Tanzania and Zambia from a MoMo perspective.
🇳🇬 LoftyInc Capital Launches $25M Fund to Back African Startups
LoftyInc Capital, a Nigerian venture capital firm, has launched its third fund, LoftyInc Afropreneurs Fund 3 (LAF3), with a $25 million target to invest in early-stage African startups. The fund will focus on seed and Series A rounds, supporting companies in fintech, logistics, e-commerce, and deep tech. LoftyInc, known for backing startups like Flutterwave and Andela, aims to capitalize on Africa’s growing tech ecosystem by providing strategic funding and mentorship to high-potential ventures. This fund underscores VCs’ continued interest in Africa’s startup scene, despite global funding slowdowns.
LoftyInc has been an active early stage investor in Africa for years. Their new fund bodes well for early stage funding particularly for Fintechs. LoftyInc has been a key investor in Flutterwave, Wave and Moove. The early stage and pre-series A section of the funding cycle has had decent pipeline and robust funding over the years. Questions exist over long-term exit opportunities particularly in Fintech. Nonetheless, both investors and entrepreneurs are getting smart about capital efficiency and realistic exit outcomes particularly in payments businesses. This insightful thread by Bernard Parah speaks to the maturity that is flowing across the ecosystem
🇳🇬 Moniepoint Partners with AfriGo to Boost Domestic Card Payments in Nigeria
Moniepoint has partnered with AfriGo, Nigeria’s domestic card scheme, to enhance local card payment solutions for businesses and consumers. This collaboration aligns with Nigeria’s push for payment sovereignty, reducing reliance on international card networks like Visa and Mastercard. By integrating AfriGo, Moniepoint aims to offer lower transaction costs, improved reliability, and greater financial inclusion for Nigerian merchants and cardholders. This move also strengthens Nigeria’s digital payments infrastructure, ensuring more control over local transactions.
In the earlier story about Carbon we spoke about the need to localise as a wider economic imperative not only for Fintechs but for the Nigerian economy at large. The interesting thing here which rhymes with similar announcements by Access Bank and PalmPay are around the use of contactless cards. Theoretically, the benefit of contactless cards particularly for Moniepoint’s client base is a faster till environment meaning that payments can be as quick as cash. In bustling markets, traders like the speed of cash because it helps them serve clients faster and avoid backlogs. Having said that, there’s a trust deficit with contactless cards and Moniepoint will have to educate customers on the benefits of contactless cards. A point emphasised by Didi Uwemakpan, VP of Corporate Affairs at Moniepoint who said “The responsibility is on us to educate the merchants and users,”