MOBILE MONEY

Given the sheer number and quality of fintechs and mobile money start-ups launching in Mozambique, it is safe to say that the future of the economy is brighter than ever.

Jaime Chizavane CO-FOUNDER, EKUTIVA SOLUTIONS

MAIZER AND I, two young IT geeks, started eKutiva Solutions in 2016, guided by the desire to join our two main passions, IT and learning. Our first product, eKuschool, was a web-based management system for schools and universities, where students and teachers could communicate, access information, and upload studying material. We later decided to expand our service by launching a service for universities that was highly requested by students: a real-time payment system for university fees based on the model of PayPal. Through our system, instead, students could easily pay their fees through a mobile wallet account. Encouraged by our success in the universities, we looked into the possibility of expanding our coverage to e-commerce, service payments, and so on. Thus, while M-Pesa has remained focused on its core business, fintech companies such as eKutiva have been looking for ways to bring enhancements to the service. While working with M-Pesa, we realized that M-Pesa’s spread in the country’s north was limited due to the presence of another mobile wallet from Movitel—E-Mola. Thus, we embarked on an ambitious project to merge all mobile wallets (including M-Cash, E-Mola, Conta Movel and M-Pesa) into one service. The main struggle was to create a uniform standard of connection between all mobile wallets. The resulting product, Quick e-Pay, is about to be launched on the market.

Fei Manheche FOUNDER AND CEO, ROBOBO

I STARTED Robobo in the UK in 2011, guided by the idea of establishing a business on IoT. I soon introduced other components to the business: software, hardware, and technologies. I returned to Mozambique in 2013 and tried to test the market to ascertain whether the business model of Robobo was viable in Mozambique. This was challenging at the time, because the internet was still quite new here. Now we are seeing a gradual shift toward digitalization; even IoT could pick up over the coming years, especially in the field of agriculture, where there are numerous ways to apply IoT solutions. In 2016, we noticed a shift in the public. People were increasingly using apps, and local businesses were tapping into this new technology and incorporating it into their business. So, we started to offer our solutions to local businesses. We soon identified a key problematic area for the market: how to process payments. Thus, we started offering customer-tailored solutions based on mobile wallets. At the same time, we realized the importance of implementing a payment aggregator system, similar to PayPal, that could work at the local level. This product, which is now at the licensing stage, is called PagaLu and is basically a payment service provider. We have been selected to run as a start-up under the sandbox accelerator launched by the central bank with support from the Financial Sector Deepening of Mozambique (FSDoç).

Gad Omondi COUNTRY BUSINESS REPRESENTATIVE - MOZAMBIQUE, CELLULANT

CELLULANT is a leading African Payment company built on the foundation of transforming Africa. We are about 18 years old, with a presence in 33 different African countries and offices in 18 countries. Over the years, we have developed a great degree of knowledge and agility in how to deploy our solution to the market. For instance, we developed an app for Pan African Bank in Africa in four languages. Our expansion strategy is based on the payment space. In the case of Mozambique, we started operations in 2015, following one of our big customers, Absa Bank. We organically grew to serve other customers that needed similar services, and we currently have 18 customers: four banks and 14 merchants. We leverage our payment gateway to support a payment ecosystem in the market to help the partners grow, not only in terms of revenue, but also customers. In addition, we target internet companies that need connectivity in Africa. In Mozambique, we are able to serve any company that wishes to collect payment from mobile money, online card payment, mobile banking services, or e-commerce services. We are coming up with ways to give insight to governmental institutions and departments on how to collect information and payments more efficiently. The penetration has not been that easy; it takes one step at a time. In the next two to three years, we see the possibility of an e-commerce driven economy powered by Cellulant.

Andy Jury CEO, MUKURU

THE IDEA was to make fuel vouchers available in Zimbabwe during the days of hyperinflation. These were paid for by relatives in the UK. This prompted us to look at remittances from the diaspora, and as the dollarization of the Zimbabwean economy reduced the use of fuel vouchers, we shifted our focus to the inter-African diaspora, where we saw a massive opportunity. We designed a solution for people who send the equivalent of USD30-50. We estimate that 5070% of remittances within Africa are still transferred informally. These processes are fraught with points of friction, such as long wait times, few guarantees, and lack of transparency and regulation. Through technology, we ensure that this questionable and lengthy process can now be done in a matter of minutes. Indeed, fintech is revolutionizing the way we approach financial inclusion. To date, we have signed up 2 million people in seven countries serving a network of 90 send-receive corridors. South Africa has been our natural hub, given the high diaspora population, but we are seeing increasing opportunities in other hubs, such as Zambia and Botswana. We have set a flexible field infrastructure that centers around agents and ambassadors who promote the advantages of our service. We also have our own branch and booth network. Our robust technology, which works on Android phones, can sign up customers for KYC verification. We have invested heavily in customer care and have a large, multilingual contact center in Cape Town.

João Manuel Brites Gaspar FOUNDER & CEO, PAYTEK – TECNOLOGIAS E SERVIÇOS DE PAGAMENTOS

I STARTED working on Paytek in 2016. It seemed the right moment to implement a payment service provider in the country, as at that time, one could only acquire a license to operate a bank or to create a mobile money operator like M-Pesa, with no in-between solution such as a payment aggregator or payment provider. We set up the company in July 2018, when the central bank decided to implement the sandbox, and we applied to be one of the sandbox’s first members. Our initial project, an aggregation payment service, was postponed due to a lack of legislation protecting data ownership; however, that is our end goal, and it will provide a real disruptive service to end customers, enabling them to compare different payment methods and choose the best one. Meanwhile, we are offering a mobile digital payment account that allows people to make contactless payments with QR codes. We are currently piloting this within the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM) campus. We want to tackle the full market through both the general public of users and the merchant market, i.e. large-scale institutions with a large preexisting user pool. We have to work heavily on marketing. For this reason, we are currently looking for an investor and want to showcase our success at UEM campus. We are pushing the central bank to implement a virtual sandbox where any fintech company can start a dialogue with the regulators, presenting the services and asking for directives or comments.