African Fintech’s Inflection Ignites Belated B2B Payments Disruption

In the African tech innovation bubble, fintech is the most illustrious sector of all time. The dash to digitize financial services has wooed investors into a value pool wherein the continent’s first and largest sets of unicorns and exits were baptized. 

Of the USD 4.08 B African startups racked up last year, fintechs pulled in USD 2.31 B—nearly half the cumulative VC fundraising. However, the wave has, so far, been isolated to the businesses-to-consumer scene, where numerous ventures attempt to energize the region’s financial inclusion crusade. 

The business-to-business locus has, for long, evaded the much-needed storm, despite being an indispensable aspect of financial services. According to the World Bank, B2B payments in Sub-Saharan Africa is a USD 1.5 T opportunity, yet the market is laden with manual and unnerving cumbersome processes. Yet, the region’s B2B fintech drive, fraught with a plethora of drawbacks, is largely manual and underserved. 
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