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Global Fintech Trends – 23rd August, 2024

Author afnetwork

Published on: August 23, 2024

Bank of Tanzania Unveils Regulatory Sandbox for Fintech Startups in Tanzania

In June 2021, the Tanzania Startup Association (TSA) co-hosted a Public-Pricate Dialogue in collaboration with the Ministry of Information, Communications, and Information Technology (MICIT).

This event brought together government ministries, departments, and agencies, alongside startup companies, incubators, accelerators, and other key stakeholders from the startup ecosystem. The dialogue, chaired by former Minister of Information, Communications, and Information Technology, Dr. Faustine Ndugulile, focused on identifying the critical challenges facing startups and developing actionable strategies to address these issues.

National Framework for Regulatory Sandbox

A significant challenge identified during the dialogue was the issue of market access for startups, particularly the regulatory compliance barriers that limit many startups from testing and entering the market. These hurdles often stifle innovation at an early stage. To address this, it was agreed that MICIT would establish a National Framework for Regulatory Sandboxes to guide sector regulators in supporting startups through sector-specific sandboxes. By March 2022, the MICIT, in collaboration with TSA and other key players, successfully developed this framework.

Kenya’s Workpay closes a $5 million Series A to solidify its expansion across Africa

Workpay, a Kenyan cloud-based workforce management platform, has announced a $5 million Series A funding round, following a $2.7 million pre-Series A in 2023.
Norrsken22, a tech growth fund, led the Series A round, while several investment firms, including Visa, Axion, and Y Combinator, participated.
The startup will use the investment to enhance its performance management tool with artificial intelligence, solidify its expansion across Africa, and stabilise its financial services provision.

Founded by Paul Kimani and Jackson Kungu in 2019, Workpay provides a comprehensive cloud-based payroll and HR SaaS platform that manages the entire journey of employees and contractors from onboarding to offboarding.

With services including payroll processing, time tracking, leave management, expense tracking, performance management, employee benefits administration, and Employer of Record (EOR) solutions, Workpay has established a strong presence in over 1,000 businesses across 20 African countries.

PayComplete and Evention forge strategic alliance to enhance payment reconciliation

PayComplete, a global leader in CashTech solutions, and Evention, an innovator in automated payment reconciliation software, have joined forces to address critical financial operational challenges in the hospitality and retail sectors.

This strategic partnership aims to tackle the persistent ‘last mile’ data problem affecting cash and credit card payment reconciliation.

The collaboration between PayComplete and Evention is designed to streamline financial operations by integrating PayComplete’s CashTech solutions, which include proprietary cash management software and hardware, with Evention’s Total Recon software. This integration is set to transform the way businesses reconcile their cash and credit card payments against Point-of-Sale platforms, ensuring more efficient and accurate financial management.

This African Fintech Is Giving Workers A Better Way To Send Money Home

Now Nala has raised $40 million to build its own payment rails allowing global businesses to move money to and from Africa.

Benjamin Fernandes launched his fintech startup Nala in 2018 with the aim of speeding up money transfers within his native Tanzania. Over the next two years, the now 31-year-old former television host and Stanford MBA hit one daunting setback after another.

First, Tanzania’s largest telecommunications provider issued Nala a cease and desist letter, cutting off Fernandes’ access to one of the primary pieces of infrastructure he had been using to transfer money. Then his cofounder quit just a week before demo day at Y Combinator, the startup accelerator Nala had gained entry to in 2019, after five previous unsuccessful attempts. Finally, in 2020, the Covid pandemic hit, reducing the already lackluster demand for Nala’s domestic payment service.

Synapse’s collapse has frozen nearly $160M from fintech users — here’s how it happened

The collapse and bankruptcy of BaaS fintech Synapse has revealed how treacherous things are for the often-interdependent fintech world when one key player hits trouble.

Synapse operated a service that allowed others (mainly fintechs) to embed banking services into their offerings. For instance, a software provider that specialized in payroll for 1099 contractor-heavy businesses used Synapse to provide an instant payment feature; others used it to offer specialized credit/debit cards.

The San Francisco-based startup raised a total of just over $50 million in venture capital in its lifetime, including a 2019 $33 million Series B raise led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Angela Strange. Synapse wobbled in 2023 with layoffs and filed for Chapter 11 in April of this year, hoping to sell its assets in a $9.7 million fire sale to another fintech, TabaPay. But TabaPay walked.

CBA and BNY deliver near real-time cross-border payments

Commonwealth Bank of Australia is delivering near real-time cross-border payments to businesses and consumers who receive international payments from customers of US bank BNY.

Through the new arrangement, BNY commercial payments from overseas to businesses and individuals with Australian bank accounts will now be available to the final beneficiary in under a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The collaboration harnesses Australia’s New Payments Platform International Payments Service, enabling the last mile of BNY’s cross-border payments to Australia to be processed by CBA via the NPP.

Invest Bank partners with Network International to enhance its digital payments offering

DUBAI: Network International, a digital payments company, and Sharjah-based Invest Bank have joined hands to extend Network’s digital payment services to the bank’s corporate customers.

The collaboration will enable Invest Bank to extend Network’s merchant acquiring, card acceptance and payments services for its corporate clients, along with its full suite of technology-enabled payments solutions using a secure, scalable, and integrated omnichannel approach.

Jamal Al Nassai, Group Managing Director, Merchant Services at Network International, said, “We are excited to collaborate with Invest Bank in their digital transformation journey. This partnership reinforces Network’s commitment to empowering financial institutions across the region with secure, scalable, and innovative payment services. We are confident that this collaboration will enable Invest Bank to provide more value to their corporate clients while enabling Network to further strengthen its leadership in the region.”

MUFG invests $333m in Indian digital lender DMI Finance

MUFG Bank is investing another $333 million in Indian digital lender DMI Finance at a valuation of around $3 billion.

Little over a year after leading a $400 million financing round for DMI, Japanese giant MUFG says it will invest another 27.99 billion rupees, making it the second largest shareholder.

Using its proprietary technology, DMI Finance offers POS loans to Indians through partnerships with external parties, working with the the likes of Samsung, Google Pay and Airtel.

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Global Fintech Trends – 23rd August, 2024

National Framework for Regulatory Sandbox

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