Trio triumph in Innotribe’s African start-up challenge
The winners!
Innotribe, Swift’s innovation arm, has revealed the three winners of its third 2017 Startup Challenge for Africa in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Each start-up receives a €10,000 cash prize and will share their insights about innovation in Africa at Sibos in Toronto.
The trio are:
- IroFit Technologies – offers small businesses processing for in-store mobile/card payments (“even when there’s no internet connection”). Nigeria;
- Sokowatch – last-mile ordering and distribution network for small African shops. Kenya;
- Vugapay – a mobile wallet which can be topped up from Bitcoin, mobile money, debit and credit cards and bank accounts. Rwanda.
Sido Bestani, head of Middle East, Turkey and Africa at Swift, says this year’s finalists are “providing real solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the African financial industry including financial crime compliance, financial inclusion and supply chain finance”.
The next regional Startup Challenge will be in St Petersburg on 14 July 2017.
All about Africa
Fintech in Africa has been getting a lot of attention recently.
Questions were raised as to whether mobile money could make Africa the new boss.
According to research by Retail Banking Research (RBR), the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is the payment cards region increasing the quickest across the globe.
While back in February, Tomas Likar, VP of strategy and business development at Hyperwallet, offered opinions that 2017 is the year fintech shifts its focus to Africa.
