Sparkle launched in the fourth quarter of 2019 by offering a personal account that lets individuals save, manage personal finances and send payment requests with one link. In the period since, the startup claims to have more than 20,000 customers and processed $16m in transactions. Now, they are taking their journey a step further with […]
The idea that a bank can be wholly digital is unrelatable and unremarkable to most Africans for two reasons. About 66% of African adults are not banked. Whenever they ask for an account over the counter, they are referred to the customer service contract staff who requests certain credentials the user may not have. Secondly, […]
Kuda processed $2.2bn in February 2021. It has now raised a total of $36.6m in two years to build Africa’s digital bank. Nigerian fintech startup Kuda has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Valar Ventures, the firm co-founded and backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. Target Global, the European venture capital […]
For anyone to use a digital bank, they must have a smartphone. Right now, data puts the number of smartphone users at 10-20% of the entire population.
In the days before smartphones, the relationship between banks and technology companies in Nigeria used to be that the latter built platforms while the former offered services. Companies like Interswitch and Systemspecs are forerunners of today’s fintech boom, helping banks receive payments and extend services across platforms in the first decade of the 2000’s. Today, […]
The BackEnd explores the product development process in African tech. We take you into the minds of those who conceived, designed and built the product; highlighting product uniqueness, user behaviour assumptions and challenges during the product cycle. — Ever wondered why two digital products offering the exact same services go off on two wildly different […]
