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Wave Mobile Money Becomes First Fintech In Francophone West Africa To Obtain Electronic Money License

April 23, 2022

Wave Digital Finance, a subsidiary of the Wave Mobile Money (Wave) Group, was granted the Electronic Money Establishment (EME) license by the Central Bank of West African States — BCEAO as the first non-banking structure, non-telecommunications operator operating in several markets within the WAEMU area.

The Central Bank’s decision is a clear indication of the growing acceptance of new models of financial inclusion driven by fintech companies such as Wave.
Until now, the pan-African fintech’s mobile money operations were conducted through partner banks.

Wave will now be able to offer its financial services and products directly to customers through this EME license. Additionally, it will enable the fintech to diversify its value proposition and expand its financial services offerings, including merchant payments, savings, credit, and international money transfers, in partnership with other industry partners.

Drew Durbin, Chairman and CEO of Wave, expressed his excitement at the Central Bank’s decision: “We are overjoyed to have acquired our EME license.” We are grateful to the Central Bank for endorsing our objective of providing financially accessible and inexpensive services to everybody. The authorities have watched us develop to become Senegal’s largest mobile money service provider in less than four years, with over 6 million monthly active users, and this is only the beginning of a new age of consumer primacy in WAEMU’s mobile money.”

Coura, Mme Carine Sène, Regional Director of Wave in WAEMU, concurs: “This is a watershed moment for us because it reflects both acknowledgement of recent accomplishments and optimism for the future.” more daring. Despite our market leadership, we were unable to provide all of the financial services that we desired to our customers. With this new designation as an Electronic Money Institution, we will have direct access to the Central Bank on an equal footing with our key competitors, and we will be able to contribute more effectively to their aim of fostering financial inclusion in the region. We expect that our new offerings will increase customer acquisition and revenue generation for our distribution partners.”

Wave’s mobile money service, which began in Senegal in 2018, has already revolutionized the decades-old mobile money sector in the WAEMU region and beyond.

Due to Wave’s unique business model and best-in-class approach to financial inclusion, it is able to offer free bill payments, fee-free money withdrawals and deposits, and transfers at just 1%, which is up to 70% cheaper than competitors’ standard pricing structures.

“Our goal is to immediately expand our license to other WAEMU member countries so that our entire client base in the area can benefit from it as well. Another step toward Wave’s goal of making Africa a cashless continent,” Ms. Sene added.

Wave Mobile Money Wave Mobile Money

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh

Senegal-based Fintech Startup, Wave, Becomes Africa’s Latest Unicorn After A $200m Investment

September 7, 2021

Wave, a mobile money company based in the United States and Senegal, has raised $200 million in a Series A round of funding. Wave has received the highest Series A financing in Africa’s startup funding history, at a valuation of $1.7 billion.

Sequoia Heritage, a private investment fund and a subsidiary of Sequoia; Founders Fund; payments giant Stripe; and Ribbit Capital led the round together. Existing investors Partech Africa and Sam Altman, the former CEO of Y Combinator and current CEO of OpenAI, are also part of the round.

Drew Durbin, CEO of Wave. — *Drew Durbin, CEO of Wave*

“We saw an opportunity to make a bigger impact by trying to build a better, much more affordable mobile money service than the telcos are building throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa,” said Drew Durbin, CEO of Wave. “We didn’t see any companies besides the telcos trying to solve that problem.”

Following this round of funding, Wave plans to expand its footprint in Senegal and the Ivory Coast, as well as expand its already 800-strong product, engineering, and business teams. Wave will also grow into other markets where it believes the regulatory environment is favorable, such as Uganda.

“Since 2018, we’ve supported Wave because we were convinced mobile money is still an unsolved problem in Africa,” he said in a statement. “Wave has great product design, stellar execution, and a strong financial trajectory. We are proud to see it become the first unicorn from Senegal,” Partech general partner Tidjane Deme said in a statement.

“The opportunity in front of the company is massive. But plenty of times, I’ve gotten it wrong, so you never know. However, I have been fortunate to make a number of great investments and I feel Wave has as good of a shot as you can ask for,” he said. “Africa is going to be the fastest growing and most important market over the next coming decades for many companies. I think people are realizing how big the market opportunity is and how much value is going to be created and we’ll see a lot more things like this happen,” commented Sam Altman, an investor in this round.
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Over half of Senegal’s adults are active users of the two-year-old business, which claims to be the country’s largest mobile money player. Wave intends to emulate similar development in Ivory Coast, the second region it officially expanded to last year, putting the number of subscribers between 4 million and 5 million.

S/N	AFRICAN UNICORNS	SECTOR	YEAR FOUNDED	YEAR BECAME A UNICORN	COUNTRY (PRIMARY MARKET)	FOUNDING TEAM

1	Jumia	Ecommerce	2012	2019	Nigeria	Jeremy Hodara and Sacha Poignonnec, ex-McKinsey consultants
2	Interswitch	Financial services	2002	2019	Nigeria	Mitchell Elegbe
3	Fawry	Financial services	2008	2020	Egypt	Ashraf Sabry
4	Flutterwave	Financial services	2016	2021	Nigeria	Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, Olugbenga Agboola
5	OPay	Financial services	2018	2021	China	Opera
6	Chipper Cash	Financial services	2018	2021	Africa, with HQ in San Francisco, California, USA	Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghanaian Maijid Moujaled
7	GO1	E-learning	2015	2021	South Africa	South African Melvyn Lubega and Australian Andrew Barnes
8	Wave	Fintech	2018	2018	Senegal	Americans Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk

A Look At What Wave Does

Wave, which is a spin-off from Africa-focused remittance provider Sendwave, was founded by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk who founded Sendwave in 2014. The product was trialled in Senegal as Wave in 2018, however it was still part of the Sendwave ecosystem. Durbin and his team focused on Wave after WorldRemit purchased Sendwave.

The Dakar-based firm has an agent network that uses their cash on hand to service Wave subscribers, similar to PayPal (except with mobile money accounts instead of bank accounts). Users can make free deposits and withdrawals, and they will be charged a 1% fee if they transmit money, according to the business.

According to Durbin, this is 70% cheaper than telecom-led mobile money, and anytime there is a transfer problem, refunds are issued immediately, unlike with incumbents, who may have to wait several days.

Wave’s technology is also unique in comparison to telecom-driven mobile money. Wave is fully app-based, whereas the incumbents mostly focus on USSD (although there are provisions to use applications). Wave also offers a free QR-card that may be used to transact with an agent if you don’t have a smartphone.

Wave has been able to drive its expansion to several million monthly active users and billions of dollars in yearly volume by constructing its own full-stack infrastructure — agent network, agent and consumer applications, QR cards, company collections, and disbursements.

For its part, Sendwave delivers low-cost or no-cost remittances to Africa and Asia from North America and Europe. Last year, the YC-backed startup was acquired by WorldRemit, which paid up to $500 million in cash and equity for Sendwave.

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Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer