What if the next wave of world’s most instructive fintech models aren’t emerging from Silicon Valley — but from Africa? Here’s a deep dive into two African Fintech companies that are creating a new playbook.
What if the next wave of world’s most instructive fintech models aren’t emerging from Silicon Valley — but from Africa?
Over the past decade, the global fintech sector has grown exponentially, with international investment reaching $113.7 billion in 2023 alone (KPMG, 2024). In mature economies, this growth has largely been driven by efficiency, making financial services faster, cheaper, and more user-friendly. But in developing economies, the story has been different, where fintech has played a more foundational role, bridging deep gaps in financial inclusion. While nearly 94% of adults in high-income countries have access to a bank account, that number drops to only 55% in low-income economies (World Bank, 2023). With large sections of the population excluded from formal financial systems, fintech has stepped in not just to enhance, but to build foundational infrastructure from the ground up.
Some of the most instructive financial innovations today are emerging not from surplus, but from scarcity, where the absence of traditional systems has created room for bold, necessity-driven solutions.
Some of the most instructive financial innovations today are emerging not from surplus, but from scarcity.
In Africa, this paradox has catalyzed one of the world’s most exciting fintech revolutions. In the absence of traditional infrastructure, agile startups have emerged to leapfrog the old banking system entirely.
FINTECH LANDSCAPE OF AFRICA
Africa has become a leading example of this shift. Despite being home to over 1.4 billion people, the continent remains largely underserved by traditional banking. As of 2023, more than 350 million adults in Sub-Saharan Africa remain unbanked, while mobile money accounts surpass 500 million, often serving as the primary financial interface (GSMA, 2023).In Sub-Saharan Africa, just 48% of adults had access to a formal bank account, significantly below the global average of 76% (World Bank, 2023). Yet, the continent has seen a steady rise in fintech solutions tailored to local contexts.
Amid this continental evolution, Nigeria has emerged as a central hub for fintech development. Despite only 45% of Nigerian adults holding a formal bank account (World Bank, 2023), the country is home to over 220 fintech startups(Briter Bridges, 2023). In 2022, Nigeria attracted $507 million in fintech investment, the largest share in Africa (Partech, 2023). Among the companies leading this transformation are Flutterwave and Moniepoint, two of Nigeria’s most influential digital financial service providers. Though different in their core offerings, both companies exemplify how fintech can respond effectively to structural constraints.
Both companies have built systems that are digital-first but designed with local operational and risk conditions in mind, often blending agent-led distribution with back-end automation. This blog now turns to two companies, Flutterwave and Moniepoint, that illustrate how different sub-sectors within fintech are evolving in context of Africa’s financial and technological landscape.
FLUTTERWAVE
BUILDING SCALABLE PAYMENT INFRASTRUCTURE IN FRAGMENTED MARKETS
Founded in 2016, Flutterwave is a Nigeria-based fintech company that provides digital payment infrastructure for businesses across Africa. Headquartered in Lagos and San Francisco, the company aims to reduce payment fragmentation and enable seamless cross-border commerce in a continent marked by multiple currencies and systems (Flutterwave, 2024). Flutterwave’s core business is providing a unified payments API that allows businesses to accept and process payments through diverse channels—cards, bank transfers, USSD, and mobile money—across multiple African countries. It acts as a payment enabler for global firms such as Uber, Flywire, and Booking.com (Flutterwave, 2024).
As of 2023, Flutterwave is operational in over 30 African countries, having processed more than 550 million transactions worth over $32 billion since inception (Flutterwave, 2024). In 2022, it raised $250 million in Series D funding, pushing its valuation to $3 billion, making it one of Africa’s most valuable tech startups (TechCrunch, 2022). Its flagship product, Rave, integrates various local payment methods while enabling real-time currency conversion and checkout flexibility (Flutterwave, 2024).
Olugbenga Agboola, Flutterwave co-founder and CEO
Regulatory Depth and Operational Autonomy
Operating in a multi-jurisdictional space, Flutterwave has obtained regulatory approval from central banks in Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa. It often works through licensed partnerships, minimizing compliance risks and ensuring localization of onboarding and KYC procedures (CBN, 2023). For example, A critical turning point was securing Nigeria’s Switching and Processing License in 2022 (Central Bank of Nigeria, 2022).
What Flutterwave is Doing Differently: Flutterwave’s model differs in three key areas:
- It focuses on infrastructure enablement rather than consumer-facing applications, positioning itself as a backend service layer for enterprises.For eg. In 2021, Flutterwave launched Send by Flutterwave, a remittance product allowing diaspora users to send money directly into African bank accounts and mobile wallets (GSMA, 2023).
- It holds a full stack of regulatory licenses, allowing it to process, switch, and settle transactions without relying on intermediaries, improving cost control and operational clarity.
- It has invested in system-level redundancies to manage regional infrastructure variability, including fallback routing and localized transaction handling.
MONIEPOINT
EXTENDING AGENT‑LED FINANCE TO AFRICA’S MSME CORE
Tosin Eniolorunda, CEO, Moniepoint Inc
Moniepoint, formerly known as TeamApt, is a Nigerian fintech company founded in 2015. Initially a back-end banking software provider, it has since evolved into a full-fledged financial platform for small businesses, focusing on real-world access and digitization of informal enterprises (Moniepoint, 2023).
It provides an integrated suite of financial services for MSMEs, including POS terminals, business bank accounts, instant working capital loans, payroll services, and inventory tracking tools. Its network of over 500,000 agents functions as both cash-in/cash-out points and distribution hubs in remote areas (Moniepoint, 2023). This is supported by real-time risk analytics that maintain transaction integrity while managing operational costs in low-margin contexts (The Fintech Times, 2023).
Moniepoint currently serves more than 1.6 million small businesses and processed approximately 3.8 billion transactions valued at over $170 billion in 2023 (Moniepoint, 2023; TechCabal, 2023). In recognition of its business model’s relevance in informal economies, Moniepoint was listed among TIME’s 100 Most Influential Companies of 2025, reflecting its role in last-mile service delivery and operational resilience (FF News, 2025).
Regulatory Environment
Moniepoint holds both a Microfinance Bank license and Super-Agent license from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), giving it the legal capacity to provide both deposit and credit services. Its operations align with Nigeria’s tiered KYC structure, allowing scalable customer onboarding with varying levels of documentation (CBN, 2023).
What Moniepoint Is Doing Differently :
Moniepoint’s strength lies in its hybrid delivery model: combining digital platforms with on-the-ground field support. Field officers assist in onboarding, training, and servicing, which increases trust and uptake in low-literacy or cash-heavy environments.
- Offline‑first reach: It leverages a widespread network of physical agents to bridge connectivity gaps and build merchant trust, helping to build trust among merchants who may be unfamiliar with digital financial systems.
- Integrated Service: The platform offers a single, unified solution that combines payments, short-term credit, and inventory financing. This reduces administrative burden and simplifies access for merchants operating outside the formal banking sector.
- Data-driven credit assessment: By analyzing transaction volumes and repayment patterns from its POS systems, Moniepoint can offer tailored credit limits, even in the absence of formal financial records, enabling more accurate and responsible lending.
WHAT KEY-CALLS WORKED WELL FOR THEM
Flutterwave and Moniepoint offer nuanced examples of how fintech firms can evolve in response to complex, fragmented markets by aligning with regulatory frameworks, grounding technology in real operational needs, and maintaining a sharp focus on inclusion. Their trajectories reflect broader shifts underway in emerging economies, where financial innovation increasingly takes shape at the intersection of infrastructure gaps and digital opportunity.
- Interoperable Core Infrastructure – Flutterwave demonstrates that a single orchestration layer, spanning cards, wallets, and bank transfers, lowers systemic frictions and raises uptime; an India‐specific analogue would deepen resilience beneath the UPI front‑end and ease future cross‑border connectivity.
- Activity‑Based Licensing – Securing full processing rights allowed Flutterwave to internalise settlement and fraud decision-making. A tiered, activity‑based licence regime for non‑banks could give Indian operators similar end‑to‑end control while preserving supervisory clarity.
- Agent Networks with Embedded Credit – Moniepoint pairs physical agents with POS data to calibrate short‑term loans for micro‑merchants. Equipping India’s Business Correspondents and kiranas with comparable toolsets could extend formal credit where digital‑only channels underperform.
Adapting these practices will require calibrated pilots, not wholesale import, but they provide a tested blueprint for broadening inclusion without destabilising the core payment rails.
Both the companies have been named by TIME as the “Top 100 companies of 2025” .
(Contributed by Divyanshi, India Fintech Foundation)
