In Africa, no sector has the same potential as the Fintech space when it comes to impact and profit. Indeed, according to statistics, more than 320 million dollars have been raised in the FinTech sector since 2015. Moreover, the ecosystem of African fintech companies has jumped by 60% in the past 2 years.
It is therefore not surprising to see many fintech start-ups springing up all over the continent with rigorous entrepreneurs and executives at their head. Their aim is to actively participate in the African continent technology’s development.
In our article, we will introduce you to the 5 best fintech start-up CEOs in Africa.
– Amit Gaur for Ezipay
– Mitchell Elegbe for Interswitch
– Fara Ashiru Jituboh for Okra
– Kamal Budhabhatti for Craft Silicon
– Dare Okoudjou for MFS Africa
1- Amit Gaur, Founder, Group Managing Director&CEO at Ezipay
It is almost impossible to talk about Africans Fintech CEO’s without mentioning Amit Gaur. With a bachelor in Commerce and Masters in International Marketing and Finance from India, Msc in Finance from UK, the CEO has been on Cx level with I-Tel Group, Sierratel & SADC. He has been busy with a rich 22 years of experience in Banking and Telecom thought distribution, training, vendor relations and retail business.
The leader is currently the Group Managing Director of Artificial Intelligence Technologies Ltd (AIT Ltd), a private company limited by shares and duly incorporated under the republic of Seychelles. AIT Ltd have branches in Ghana, Zambia, India, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, India and Conakry.
Amit Gaur’s company own a brand Ezipay, that is a money transfer app build to promote better payment services and the drive towards cashless economy. Actually, Ezipay gives solutions to address the issues and challenges of financial inclusion.
The CEO and Founder of Ezipay Africa through his company train people to develop business and execute strategies. The aim of those strategies is to increase market share and revenues in distribution, business development and sales. “We are committed to making Africa the next power house in Digital Transformation and Financial Inclusion for 1.3 billion Africans”, Amit Gaur revealed.
Ezipay Africa is one of the fastest fintech growing start-up
Ezipay is Africa’s first P2P QR code payment system solutions provider for merchants and individuals. Currently, Ezipay is providing its users with the cheapest, fastest safest and most convenient way to send money to loved ones at excellent rates. The app also allows users to transfer money to any bank account. Furthermore, Ezipay is useful for paying bills and services to over 250 merchants and businesses in Ghana, eight francophone countries in West Africa and in Sierra Leone.
Moreover, Ezipay helps people to pay for airtime, TV subscription, MTN fiber bundles, Wi-Flix (Video-on-Demand service), Ghinger Healthcare. Flight and hotel booking as well as groceries ordering from Afrobaskets are also an option on Ezipay. Very soon, it will introduce online Education, Insurance and Games, which can, directly, be played from the app.
Easy to use, the app protect user’s data with the best security systems the world has to offer. Indeed, the very friendly interface can be used to make payments with credit or card (Visa/MasterCard). However, before using the app, the user need to pass the KYC process and have to use 3D secure enabled cards. In other terms, the user’s card details are not saved, stored or transmitted.
His fintech start-up started its journey on October 2017 and since recorded over GHC 1,000,000 in transactions. The company also totalize an average of 100 000 dollars transactions per day, have over 20 000 active user base and more than 100 000 total download.
For its fast growing, Ezipay has won the “International Achievement Award for Quality & Business Excellence” from OMAC. It also collaborated with banks such as UBA Group or Guaranty Trust Bank Limited (GTBL) and Fintech companies to provide the best service to its users.
2- Mitchell Elegbe, Founder, Group Managing Director&CEO at Interswitch
Formerly, Mitchell Elegbe graduated in Electrical Engineering from the University of Benin. Afterwards, he worked at Schlumberger Wireline and Testing, and Telnet, an ICT engineering and consulting company until 2002, when he created Interswitch Group.
Currently, this Fintech CEO is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of his own start-up. He has been up to increase and develop INTERSWITCH activities on an international level.
In 2012, due to the fast growth of his start-up, Mitchell Elegbe received the West Africa Business Leader Award at the All African Business Leaders Awards (AABLA) organized by CNBC Africa.
He is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award recipient and he won the Harvard Business School Association (Nigeria) Leadership Award in the General Management Category in 2015. The leader is also a Bishop Desmond Tutu fellow of the African Leadership Institute.
His company is an integrated digital payment and transaction company founded in Lagos. Over the next decade-plus, Interswitch accelerated the adoption of digital payments across Africa. Now, it stand as a pioneer of building the infrastructure to digitize finance on the continent.
The company also produce a lot of product innovation and expansion such as the first electronic switch whereby Nigerian financial institutions could communicate and operate ATMs and point of sales operations. Now way beyond the startup phase, Interswitch has since move into high-volume personal and business finance.
3- Fara Ashiru Jituboh, CEO and CTO of Okra
Fara Ashiru Jituboh is a highly skilled Nigerian software engineer. Used to rolling up her sleeves and building, the engineer is an expert in over 20 programming languages.
Her fintech start-up, Okra, is a super-connector based in Nigeria, which allows customers, banks and applications to make secure exchange of real-time financial information between each other’s.
Incredibly fast growing (fast less than 6 months), the company was oversubscribed during the pandemic and has convinced big companies such as Tlcom to be one of their main investor. Nothing surprising when we know that the fintech company has raised 1 M pre-seed round.
The idea of Okra come for her Fintech CEO best inspiration source : resolving her own problems. Born in Nigeria, Jituboh spent a year there as a teenager but grew up in USA. During a visit to her native country, she felt necessary to do something big in her country.
According to her will, she moved back to Nigeria and then started a studio where she built technologies for other companies such as AXA Mansard, Airtel and Sanofi Pharmaceuticals.
In 2019, Jituboh temporarily moved back to USA to have her son. During that time, she started using Mint, an application that helped her manage her funds. At her returns to Nigeria, she noticed that no such application existed in the country and she decided to create one herself. That is how Okra was born.
4- Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO and CTO of Craft Silicon
Nicknamed Kenya’s Bill Gate by Forbes, Kamal Budhabhatti is an unassuming indian-kenyan entrepreneur working towards putting African software on the global map. Born from a newspaper vendor father in Jamnagar, India, the future Fintech CEO studied physics in an Indian university.
While at school, the future engineer develop an interest for computers and software which make him learned computer programming during his pastime. Once graduated from his university, Budhabhatti struggled to find a data-entry job in India.
The dream builder did not stay long at his new job and started developing a house software for banks and financial institutions till the creation of Craft Silicon in 2000. The company, witch have a local base with global aspiration, provide bespoke, mobile, microfinance and innovative software in core banking, switch solutions and electronic payments on four continents.
Craft Silicon serve over 200 clients in 40 countries spread across Africa, Asia, Europe and Americas. An annual report estimate the start-up’s market value of around 50 million dollars with 6 million annual revenues.
From the dingy apartment he started off from, Craft Silicon now operates from its corporate Headquarters, a $5 million Craft Silicon campus in Nairobi. The campus have boasts of wireless internet connectivity, a gym, bars, swimming pools, basket court and a pool tables. The company employees are pampered with huge salaries, free lunch and a comprehensive medical scheme.
More than half of Africans do not have a bank account. In such a context, Craft Silicon presents itself as a gateway whose role is to connect banks to their customers by creating a remote account opening solution. That solution provides banks and their customers with a unique engagement platform for opening new accounts through any portable device.
5- Dare Okoudjou, Founder and CEO of MFS Africa
Dare Okoudjou is the last Fintech CEO of our list. The founder, Ceo of MFS Africa was born in Benin and studied Engeeniering and Physics in Morroco when he got an Msc in Telecom Engineering. Then, he flights to Paris to integrate the prestigious INSEAD business school when he got an MBA.
His first work experience was in New-York in a start-up where the future CEO learn everything about the development of a company. Dare Okoudjou also spent five years in PwC’s telco and media practice during the Dot Com boom. Prior to founding MFS Africa, Dare worked at MTN Group where he developed its mobile payment strategy.
His company, MFS Africa is a leading pan-African fintech company that develops innovative value added services for mobile wallets operating the largest digital payments hub on the continent. The company also develops innovative value added services for mobile wallets. The company was created to simplify the process and make sending money as easy as a phone call.
Launched in 2010, MFS Africa is now operating in more than 80 partners connected and is covering over millions mobile money recipients. The company connects mobile transfer’s operators, merchants to over 200 million mobile wallet customers African mobile wallets and banks in sub-Saharan Africa.
MFS Hub also allows its partners to take advantage of the unique ubiquity of mobile wallets as a cost-effective, convenient, and safe transaction channel. To meet its goals, the company works in close partnership with mobile network operators and financial institutions. Their goal is to bring simple and relevant financial services to under –banked remittances.
You live abroad and you need to send money to a mobile money account in Africa? Ezipay helps you to transfer any amount of money, anywhere, anytime, directly to your family, friends or business partners’ mobile money account. Very easy to use, Ezipay offers you extremely reduced rates for a quality service.
If you are ready to send money from abroad to Africa from your mobile phone to any mobile money account with Ezipay app, follow the next steps to do it.
Steps to follow to transfer money to any mobile money account from abroad to Africa with Ezipay
First step
Download, Sign up & Do your KYC with your ID card.
Second step
Launch the Ezipay app & Click on the mobile money icon to fil the form (recipient, mobile money number / operator, etc…).
Third step
Validate your transfer. The money will automatically be credited on your recipient’s mobile money account upon receipt.
What is Ezipay?
Ezipay is an electronic smart account that helps its users to carry out online money transactions. With the app, they can send money to a mobile money or a bank account. Users can also pay their bills, send international top-up recharge, etc.
Why to use Ezipay app to transfer money to any mobile money account from abroad to Africa?
When transferring money from abroad to any mobile money account in Africa, using Ezipay is one of the best solution.
In Africa, most people use a mobile money account. For that reason, it very difficult to choose the right one for sending money to a relative living on the continent. Indeed, hundred money transfer apps on the market are present on the market.
However, apps like Ezipay will help you to transfer easily money from abroad to Africa. The money will directly come into your recipient’s mobile money account in less than a second. The app offers users one of the lowest fees of the market.
Ezipay is a multi-currency service available in more than 140 countries around the world. It takes only 4 to 5% of the amount to send, and the fees decrease as the amount increases.
The application automatically converts the money to send at the market rate of the recipient’s country. The user can then save a valuable time.
On Ezipay, there is no room for sneaky banking or hidden charges.
Very easy to use, Ezipay facilitates money transfers to Africa 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
With its ISO certification, Ezipay also positioned itself as a very secure electronic smart account. The app gives African entrepreneurs the opportunity to become an Ezipay merchant. They will then recieve their payment anytime, anywhere in the world.
Download Ezipay app here or from Play Store, App Store or Palm Store.
For more information about ezipay, visit their website ezipay.africa.
While sending money from a prepaid mobile to another one is easy, sending international money can be very difficult and even expensive. Indeed, not every country, especially Ghana and West Africa countries, have access to international money transfer service. However, thanks to Ghana, Togo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Benin super app EziPay, it is now possible to buy and send money to anyone, anywhere in the world !!
Usually, someone living in Ghana cannot send money to somebody living in the US and someone living in Ivory Coast will not be able to send some credit to someone living in Nigeria. Nevertheless, today, thanks to EziPay new mobile top-up service, it is now possible to buy money for anyone anywhere in the world.
Let’s take a deep look into this new service that Ghana’s super app EziPay has launched a few days ago! We will learn what is international money top-up and the advantagesof this new EziPay’s service and most importantly, we will explain how to use EziPay to send credit internationally.
What is mobile international money top-up service?
To understand mobile international money top-up term, you will firstly need to familiarize yourself with the term “international money top-up”. International money top-up is a service that lets you purchase mobile money for a cellphone or mobile phone elsewhere in the world.
While simple international money top-up requires you to go through an intermediary such as currency exchange providers, mobile international money top-up service can be done directly from your phone.
In this way, no need for a merchant or a currency exchange provider to do the operation for you. Therefore, using your smartphone, tablet or computer, you can send money to your loved ones living abroad anytime, anywhere and any day.
To sum up, we can say that mobile money top-up is a service that will allow you to transfer a small amount of your credit to an overseas-prepaid mobile account from your prepaid account or your electronic wallet.
To work, the service requires an online platform such as international money transfer app like EziPay.
Benefits of Ezipay mobile international money top-up service.
Money has made its way into our daily lives, allowing us to stay connected with our family and friends around the world through calls, texts, data access and internet. other mobile services.
However, these days it’s not always easy to get credit without going to a local retailer, which isn’t available every day. In this case, being able to buy money directly on a smartphone, tablet or computer via EziPay mobile international money top-up is convenient, fast and instant.
In fact, from the comfort of your own home, you can use Ezipay mobile international money top-up service to transfer money as little as 1 Ghc or 1 euro to a loved one anywhere in the world by paying for it on your phone. The money will be deducted directly from the total amount of credit you have on your prepaid mobile account or your EziPay wallet.
How Ezipay mobile money top-up service works?
To use Ezipay international recharge service, you need to:
Install the EziPay App to Sign Up & Add money to Wallet.
Go to “international mobile recharge”
Select the country, amount of money and type the receiver’s number.
Pay with your EziPay Balance. BINGO! The receiver gets money instantly anywhere they are in the world!
Apart from being able to send money anywhere, anytime in the world, Ezipay app allows you also to do other things such as :
Sending or receiving money
With EziPay you can receive money anywhere in the world in a more convenient, secured and faster way at one of the lowest fees you can find on the market. The money will directly come into:
your EziPay wallet,
your mobile money (Momo) wallet,
your prepaid visa card or
your bank account.
Shop for groceries or liquor online
If you are located in Ghana, then you can shop your groceries and liquor from the comfort of your home on Afrobaskets app or website.
Book your flight and your hotel
Looking to take a break from work and fly to Hawaii or Malawi for vacation? Well, with EziPay app, you can directly to book your flight and your hotel from your phone, tablet or computer.
Pay bills
EziPay allows you to pay your TV bills, your money, your data, or your electricity or water bills directly on the app. While living abroad, you can also pay for your family bills using EziPay app.
Become a merchant
Become a merchant on Ezipay and receive your payment anytime, anywhere in the world.
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