Moni Fintech Friends 👋🏽,

(That's one way to say hello in Chichewa.)

Here are this week’s Africa Fintech highlights:

• Six fintech deals were announced for ~$22M in disclosed funding.
• Bain published an interesting report on the embedded finance value chain.
• There’s a new player in the African payments scene: Brazilian unicorn EBANX.

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With that said, let's get into it.

💡 “It is only when the flood is gone that you can claim to be lucky.” — Chewa proverb

💸 Fundraises

• 🇰🇪 Turaco, a Kenyan insurtech platform, raised a $10M Series A co-led by Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund (CAIF) and Novastar Ventures.
• 🇳🇬 Kippa, a Nigerian provider of digital business and financial management solutions for SMEs, raised an $8.4M seed round.
• 🇳🇬 Touch and Pay, a Nigerian NFC-enabled payments platform, raised a ~$3M seed round.
• 🇳🇬 Kredi Bank, a Nigerian full-service digital bank, was selected for SOSV’s Orbit Startups program and receives $180K.
• 🇳🇬 Capsa Technology, a Nigerian online marketplace for SME account receivables, was selected for the Techstars Detroit inaugural class of 2022 and receives $120K.
• 🇰🇪 Stax, a Kenyan/American USSD automation & offline payments platform, raised an undisclosed amount from Stellar Development Foundation.

💰 Venture Funds

• Africa-focused VC funds Unicorn Growth Capital and EchoVC joined the Celo Foundation’s efforts to support Web3 projects across Africa.

🚀 Partnerships & Product Launches

• Chapa launched Ethiopia’s first payment gateway.
• Flutterwave launched eNaira collections for merchants in Nigeria.
• Cellulant and Orange Botswana announced a partnership to promote card-to-wallet payments in the country.

📰 News of the Week

Brazilian payments unicorn EBANX announced plans to enter Africa, starting with Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. This is the latest evidence that African markets are attractive, fertile ground, not just for local fintechs, but for global players too. João Del Valle, EBANX CEO and Co-Founder said: “This is the moment for Africa, and it’s quite reminiscent of the Latin American landscape back in 2012… Africa’s fast-growing digital economy is only in its early days, and it’s projected to grow up and to the right for the next few decades.”

📑 Read of the week

Embedded Finance: What it takes to prosper in the new value chain. A solid report from Bain on the dynamics of embedded finance. “[With embedded finance,] the traditional, bank-driven value chain shifts to a new ecosystem that typically requires four main participants: the end customer, platforms that own the customer relationship, software enablers that help meet complex regulatory and technological requirements, and a regulatory services or license provider. Firms can take on multiple roles and models [but the new value chain favors platforms.]”

🙈 Visual of the week

👔 People Moves

• Jaime Pinto was appointed Chief Commercial Officer for the Africa region at digital transformation and financial inclusion platform Software Group.
• 'Nifemi Oluboyede was appointed Head of Product, Credit at Kuda Bank.
• Grace Anyetei was appointed Regional Director of Operations, Africa at Leaf Global Fintech, an IDT subsidiary.

📖 Other News, Reads, and Media

NEWS

• KoinKoin, an Africa-focused digital assets exchange, announced that annual revenues have reached $40M five years after launch
• MFS Africa will be the first recipient of a United Nations IFAD grant for mobile remittances in rural Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and The Gambia
• The Central Bank of Nigeria joined the blockchain-oriented Hyperledger Foundation

VIDEO

• Kennedy Ekezie-Joseph and Duke Ekezie-Joseph, Co-Founders, Kippa (Kippa - Video)
• Charles Savage, Founder of EasyEquities (BizNews - Video)
• Cross-border payments and trade across the African continent (BBC Africa - Video)

READS

• How Nigerian neobank Kuda incurred a loss of over $14 million in 2021 (TechCabal)
• To scale in African markets today, startups need to run hybrid strategies (Afridigest.com)
• Zimbabwe’s PostMoney has (almost) everything needed to succeed in the domestic remittance market, will it though? (Techzim)
• Super apps are proliferating across emerging markets (Afridigest.com)

🦉 Tweet of the Week

Made in Nigeria 🇳🇬 with 💚

👍🏽👎🏽 Did you like this edition of TWIF Africa? Let me know Twitter or LinkedIn. And check out Afridigest for more coverage of Africa’s innovation economy.