Betting on Africa: Why the Future of Fintech Lies on the Continent

Africa is home to 1.4 billion people. 

Nearly 1 in 5 people on the planet live here, in Africa.

57% of Africans still don’t have a bank account or mobile wallets. It is one of the last frontiers for fintech entrepreneurs. It is a virgin land, a frontier market for the adventurous looking to become the market leader. Many credit the rise of fintech as the great enabler reaching the unbanked in Africa, where traditional banks with brick-and-mortar business models simply couldn’t reach. Many say the opportunity is still huge.

In 2020, Stripe, one of the world’s largest privately held fintech unicorns, acquired PayStack, Nigeria’s very own payments company. That deal, along with a steady stream of fintech unicorn births from the likes of Interswitch, Opay, and Flut