yesterday, FingoYC-backed Kenyan fintech has launched a neobank developed in collaboration with pan-African financial institution Ecobank Kenya. A subsidiary of Ecobank has announced the first neobank in the East African country. event the country’s president and William Ruth in attendance.
It took a while for Fingo to be here since the CEO Listen to Muhoya and his co-founder James Da Costa, Ian Jugna and Gitari Tilima We established our Kenyan organization in January 2021 to provide financial services that appeal to a rapidly growing young population in Africa.
For young Africans, account opening can take hours or days and requires multiple face-to-face interactions and paper documents. In addition, you have to deal with high fees for transferring money and maintaining accounts. Yet it still struggles to access the financial services Fingo promises to offer users, including savings, insurance and credit. However, it is now touting lower transfer fees, subsidized rates on payment bills, cashback rewards, and other features including payment links and customized savings plans.
Fingo entered after a $200,000 pre-seed round. YC S21 It raised $4 million in seed funding towards the end of that year. Multi-stage venture capital firm HOF Capital led the round, along with Hustle Fund, Pioneer Fund, TCVP, Launch Africa, Chandalia Capital, Naibang (Nairobi Angel Network), Chui Ventures, co-founders and executives of Monzo and Twitch. You have to participate. From Google, Facebook, Paytm. This was followed by a partnership with Ecobank and Fingo starting to integrate with banks towards the software launch, as well as a final approval from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) in the first quarter of this year. Awaiting regulatory approval.
Fingo App
Before giving the go-ahead, CBK always sought to understand the framework Fingo and Ecobank had set for their relationship, specifically around data, transactions and customer interactions. Unlike Nigeria, where collaborations between banks and fintech firms are commonplace, the latter group has been able to get up and running quickly (the country ultimately attracted the majority of Africa’s fintech funding). contributing to the reason). Fingo claims to be Kenya’s first neo-bank, so it makes a lot of sense when you look at the time it took to get approval and bring it to market.
Meanwhile, Muhoya said in a phone call that despite the wait, fintech kept 15 people on staff and spent little more than paying salaries and developing the software, so the bank-raised venture capital was huge. As such, we have not raised additional funding for operations, especially in this challenging funding environment.
With the partnership approved, the Fingo Africa app will provide users with a bank account “within 5 minutes”, free peer-to-peer transactions and instant access to multiple services such as savings, financial education and smart spending analytics. Combine. , the company said in a statement. The fintech claims to have a waiting list of 50,000 customers within 24 hours of its launch. However, if you plan to put millions into a market dominated by mobile money (Safaricom’s M-Pesa controls his 90%+ of that media), The banking sector dominated by the likes of KCB and Equity Bank (which have digital banking products).
Fingo’s partnership with Ecobank claims to have the most significant footprint of any African bank, covering more than 30 countries, and has the potential to provide the scale Fintech needs outside of Kenya. there is. Both companies are planning a pan-African expansion, with expansion to the rest of East Africa imminent by the end of the year. Muhoya. Digital banking counterparts serving consumers in the region include: fin exclusion and core.
“Our partnership with Fingo Africa is an important milestone in our mission to provide the essential financial tools African youth need to thrive,” said Diallo Djiba, Senior Fintech Advisor, Ecobank Group. said in a statement: “Through this partnership, we are pleased to extend our current solutions and be at the forefront of youth banking in Africa. To reach millions of young people in more than 10 African markets.”
