Mukuru - Afrikan Heroes

Tough economic headwinds provide exciting opportunities for agile, customer-centric fintechs

January 23, 2024

By Andy Jury

At this time of the year there is usually a flurry of articles attempting to lay out trends to look out for in various industries over the coming months. This is a good exercise as it gets one thinking about industries broadly and technology specifically. However, it would be remiss to embark on this exercise without first taking stock of where we are now. The fintech ecosystem is currently in a period of stress, less so for incumbents but noticeably for newcomers.

This stress is a direct result of macroeconomic pressures piling up to generate headwinds for new market entrants. As we all know, when the macro picture is less than rosy it affects play out on the ground. In summary, there is less money floating around – less money from investors and most notably, less disposable income in the hands of consumers.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate how this looks in the broader African context. Firstly, it means there is significantly less money knocking on the doors of new and innovative businesses that need investors.

Just recently, a payments processor headquartered in France lost 53% of its value – this kind of scenario has a knock-on effect across borders. However, there is a massive opportunity for fintechs that have bootstrapped themselves up in the uniquely African context.

What does this opportunity look like? For starters, there continues to be a great deal of disruption in the market. Fintechs, mobile network operators (MNOs) and banks will approach the challenges and opportunities differently. The ones that emerge from this phase in a strong position will be those that have thought about the economics of their proposition carefully, because the opportunity that presents itself in tough times is likely more scalable from an addressable market perspective.

On the other hand, those who react will focus on price. A war on price is a race to the bottom. On the contrary, the businesses and fintechs that get through the tough times will be those that focus on customer experience (CX). It may be considered an intangible that sits between the bricks and cogs of a business, but it is crucial.

In difficult conditions, every business focuses on customers returning and using their products and services more frequently. This isn’t easy, or everyone would be getting it right. Customers with less money in their pockets become more discerning, and in our experience are looking for a full basket of genuinely personalised customer experience where affordability is a crucial component, but most certainly not the only one.

We have learnt that speed, access, trust, convenience and safety in the payments space continue to be exceptionally important drivers in customers’ decision making on where to spend their hard-earned money. At Mukuru we build very tight feedback loops with our customers and the feedback we get time and time again is speed, ease of use and safety is primary to how they develop their consideration set.

Looking ahead, regulation will continue to play an important role in how the industry evolves. The FATF’s greylisting earlier this year has had a significant impact on businesses such as ours. We are under increasing scrutiny, not because anyone thinks we present any more risk than before, but because accountable institutions must demonstrate that they are confident money isn’t being laundered or used for nefarious purposes. The result is that fintechs need to spend more time thinking and planning their products and must be tight in terms of the relationships they build with their customers.

Regulation is also expected to present immense opportunities, especially in Southern Africa. South Africa, for example, lags other regions in the realm of mobile money. Legislation which is expected to come into play in 2025 will effectively form the framework within which e-money capabilities will be governed. This moment will be a significant game changer for the region. The ability for more people to use e-wallets more frictionlessly will add immense value in the South African context and will fundamentally change the landscape of how money is stored, used and moved.

Looking toward this big disruption on our doorstep, businesses will approach the opportunity differently. There will be those who throw mud at the wall and see what sticks, whereas we believe the real winners will be those that remain crisp and precise with their customer propositions. In this context, we believe partnerships will be vital for stability and growth, where partners enter mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships. These can take many shapes and forms, such as payment providers bridging the gap between the informal and formal sectors solving a problem for fintechs who need ways to enable their customers to pay for goods and services, and where the payment provider gets access to millions of previously unreachable customers.

Digitisation and diversification will continue to be important trends in the coming months and years. Take a moment to consider the power that MNOs and banks have traditionally exerted in the formal payments ecosystem – fintechs who are agile can enter into partnerships with other fintechs to offer similar one-stop solutions to those currently offered by the MNOs and banks. This trend will see an equalisation of influence.

Lastly, those that prioritise customer needs and wants will emerge stronger. There are two schools of thought on how you digitise money. The first is that you place a wallet in someone’s hands and encourage them to use it. This would be the traditional approach. The Mukuru approach, and certainly the approach of the more agile players, is to find a way to help people with their payment and remittance needs and then graduate them towards using a digital store of value as they develop trust in the brand and the technology.

These are divergent approaches, but in difficult economic conditions our experience – which has seen us sign up 14-million customers across many countries – says it is better to listen to what customers want and then walk a journey with them as they become more sophisticated in their digital journeys. Our approach is to solve a problem and then gradually build trust and extend the services and products we offer, as opposed to building a shiny product and waiting for customers to arrive.

Andy Jury, CEO at Mukuru (www.Mukuru.com)

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Digital Payments: A Crucial Step in the Financial Inclusion Endgame

December 14, 2022

By Andy Jury

In years gone by, pages such as these have been awash with articles and opinions about fintechs and their potential to drive financial inclusion and improve the lives of millions of unbanked and underserved communities. While these opinions have been crucial in raising awareness, the discussion should now shift to the “how”. How are fintechs driving real, measurable financial inclusion? How are they helping people to help themselves?

A financially underserved person that has spent his or her life earning and transacting in cash, largely in an informal ecosystem, needs more than just the concept of “financial inclusion” to truly be included in society and achieve their potential. They need a solution that bridges the divide between cash and digital.

To illustrate how different the world is today from, say, 20 short years ago, consider that in 2004 46% of South Africans were banked (https://bit.ly/3FO4YLt). Today that number hovers around 85%. A report about the future of payments and financial inclusion in South Africa, conducted by Deloitte, says that financial inclusion’s potential to catalyse inclusive growth is constrained because many people are not using their access to financial services or rely on informal channels. That’s an education challenge, one that fintechs need to rise to, and one that’s been core to our mission at Mukuru.

That preference for cash is not exclusive to South Africa. Africa is a large continent where many migrant workers, who aren’t banked, cross borders to find work and then need to send money home. That’s why we started the business – to provide a simple, convenient and fast way to manage remittances for underserved communities. However, users of these remittance services need to be able to access other goods and services – which, as we know, are increasingly becoming digital. Being restricted to cash essentially cuts someone off from a host of essential and leisure goods and services that can’t be accrued synchronously and in person and, ultimately, severs any access to credit which is a marker of true financial inclusion.

However, as with all things in Africa, the ingenuity of the human spirit triumphs. On this continent, we are blessed with the resilience and fortitude to put our heads down and develop tools that address real needs on the ground. By listening closely to customers and working within the unique circumstances on the continent, we develop innovative solutions to attract new customers who, in turn, lead us down new paths. An African fintech grows with its client base.

The key barrier on the continent is access, and the issue is twofold. Retailers and merchants don’t know how to bridge the cash to digital divide to service the large unbanked potential customer base, and customers are precluded from participating in the digital economy because they don’t have the means of taking their stored-up cash into the digital economy.

And so, as we have grown with our customer base of over 11 million people, we, like them, have recognised the need to shift from focusing exclusively on remittances, while they remain crucial, and look at how to enable a broader array of payment transactions within our ecosystem. To that end, years ago, most remittances were cash to cash, whereas today, this has shifted where customers are choosing to keep their value in digital form. Related to this, we appreciate efforts by banks and fintechs to find each other and provide bridges for more people to partake in the mainstream economy.

At the start of this piece, I referred to the “how”. Some would argue that digital payments are the endgame of financial inclusion, however, a more accurate description would be that while digital payments are a fundamental step, financial inclusion is built-in, appreciating the concept of digitisation and all the steps and rails one builds to enable complete digitisation.

To do this, you must first digitise the customer record, or onboarding, as that gives you a means of tracking behaviour patterns that people build up over time. You must then digitise the means with which you communicate with people. After this, you digitise the customer engagement channels, such that customers are in effect reaping the benefits of electronic transactions even if they still use physical forms of cash as a source of funds / to pay. It’s here where you start getting people to the point where they trust your platform and then are comfortable making a transition to using electronic forms of cash and routinely using a digital store of value.

Seen this way, real financial inclusion is a process of learning for the customer, accepting and building trust, up to the point where they start transacting online, using fintech technology such as Mukuru, the Mukuru Card and our new platform called Mukuru Pay, as opposed to being excluded because they did not have traditional bank accounts, and credit and debit cards. Mukuru Pay enables customers to pay and be paid in whichever way is more convenient to them, be it for online shopping, bill payments, aid/donor payments – a wide variety of disbursements and collections are now possible both locally and cross-border through Mukuru.

We have recently launched our Mukuru Pay partnership with Multichoice, Africa’s leading entertainment company that operates DStv, amongst other services, and a major satellite television service in Sub-Saharan Africa. Initially, the partnership provides a price-competitive offering through a ubiquitous footprint for our customer base in Zimbabwe, who now have the option to pay their DStv subscription in cash via Mukuru Pay. Customers can initiate transactions through their mobile devices and pay their DSTV subscription at over 200 Mukuru booths or branches and over 500 partner locations in 70 towns across Zimbabwe.

Once customers start transacting online, they change their behaviour. This behaviour change creates the “great unlock”, so to speak, which gains them access to a broad range of financial products, including credit.

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By following these steps, a fintech company can go down new avenues and develop products that customers ask for and need. Mukuru’s evolution – including pending announcements about new product features which will unlock a whole new world of digital retail and financial transactions for our customers – has been about finding the “how” that enables people to help themselves.

Andy Jury is the Group CEO of Mukuru (https://www.Mukuru.com)

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

A mobile-led risk-based approach is crucial to achieving financial inclusion in Africa

July 31, 2022

By Sandy Rheeder

Fintechs that are innovating, operating and growing throughout Africa have moved on from the broad academic concept of financial inclusion to the practical onboarding and walking hand in hand with underserved people along a financial journey.

The first port of call is understanding that serving the underserved is not just about technology. It’s about the human element of dealing with people that are not part of the mainstream financial system; it’s about reaching them and engaging with them where they are and when they need you. Repeat use of a product or service happens when you create products that serve real customer needs.

The world of mobile access has unlocked an ecosystem where mobile channels can sit alongside a predominantly cash economy, and this is vital for meaningful digital inclusion.

If a fintech wishes to onboard people and develop trust, it must be able to do this without forcing customers to take a financial leap to mobile money or a digital store of value. Often, off the bat, it is a bridge too far. Trust needs to be developed first.

At Mukuru, we have utilised mobile digital channels to sit alongside a cash-driven transaction. This is important because 60% to 90% (depending on the region) of payment transactions in Sub-Saharan Africa are still happening in cash. If you attempt to force the move to a digital store of value it is often too much for a financially underserved individual in the region, particularly those who have left their home countries to find work.

Financial inclusion must be seen as a journey, and you start by putting someone in control of their financial destiny without asking them to put their money into something that they don’t yet understand, such as the concept of the cloud.

Our market still operates predominantly on 2G mobile connections, which means that USSD is a critical channel. An effective fintech meets these customers at the touchpoints where they currently transact and then walks them down a path towards understanding mobile use cases. Once the customer understands that they can control a digital transaction, encouraging them to partake in the world of mobile wallets and digital payments becomes a logical progression.

This is a blueprint for financial inclusion. If we take Mukuru’s experience, and when looking at our 10-million customers and their journeys, by the end of February 2021, up to 90% of our customers were signed up through a field agent. Despite this, 80% of orders were being created through self-service digital channels: 43% on USSD and 32% on WhatsApp. This is evidence that if you can create products that customers need, and meet them where they are, you can grow them from a face-to-face, field force model into a self-service model where they start taking control of their own financial agenda.

However, there are still millions of people who can’t be reached by field agents. It’s not fair that they should be excluded because they live in remote regions. They, too, should have access to financial services. A mobile-led risk-based approach represents the solution to finding them and helping them along their financial journeys.

By the very nature of connectivity on this continent, mobile sign-up is a critical entry point to the journey and basic mobile channels needs to be available. Fintechs must understand the market, as well as the regulations in various territories, and then address the barriers to sign-up which perpetuate financial exclusion.

Mukuru has taken a dual approach: We look at our core self-service channels and then we look at the limitations of those channels. Due diligence can, and must, be carried out using feature phones, and this allows access to a grassroots product. Then, when customers’ upgrade, which they do, they are able to move to a place where they can buy data, use WhatsApp and supply selfies, for example, meaning they can upgrade to a higher-level product. Once they can travel to a city where a field agent can find them, they get access to further product offerings because they can supply biometric and legal identification documents.

Then, if they wish to move up to take out even more products – such as a mobile wallet – the documentation and due diligence requirements go up once more. The next step up would be feature-rich, self-help services in the form of websites and apps. A big mistake is that many believe you can start the journey on this rung of the ladder. In Mukuru’s experience, in the SADC region, the use of these channels represents about 5% to 8% of total volume. Fintechs must serve their customers what they need, and they are voting with their feet and fingers – they want to use simplified channels.

Collaboration between regulators is important – for access to identification – and fintechs make this process far easier. The point is that one doesn’t have to swing the door wide open in the first instance because of the very limitations that left people excluded in the first place. Rather, with a careful, mobile-led, risk-based approach the door can be inched wider until they reach a point where they step into full financial inclusion.

If we look at a Mukuru snapshot in February 2020, 70% of our transactions were cash-to-cash.

In February 2022, we moved to only 49% of those transactions being cash-to-cash, and a digital store of value (which started as a remittance) is becoming a real way of life for a significant portion of the customers who were onboarded through access to a digital channel.

Financial inclusion and verified customer onboarding can, and do, work hand in hand. If you start someone on their financial journey by giving them access to a digital channel rather than forcing them to convert immediately to a digital store of value, you start moving people along a financial journey they can control.

Sandy Rheeder is the CIO of Mukuru (www.Mukuru.com)

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Cash is still king … but not for much longer

April 4, 2022

By Andy Jury

There are varying degrees of denial about the truth that cash won’t be king forever. Of course, many regions around the world are well on the journey to full digitisation, while others, like Africa, are at a different point on this journey. But it’s a journey they’re taking nonetheless.

The concept of digital inclusion is here to stay. We won’t wake up tomorrow and suddenly find that everyone has an e-wallet and is transacting digitally on every platform. However, we are going to continue seeing a shift from informal to formal, from entirely cash-based segments of the economy towards the uptake of various forms of digitisation. There’s an ever greater need to bridge the cash and digital divide and the platforms that will succeed are the ones that will enable people to go on this journey over the bridge between the two paradigms.

At the outset, the biggest challenges to financial inclusion remain access, trust and education. These aren’t standalone themes. Rather, they are interwoven strands of a very powerful rope that can be used to construct the bridge over the digital divide.

All new digital initiatives and start-ups that fail in Africa have missed one or more of those strands — their ropes were simply not strong enough.

Access: Do people have access to the types of phones and devices that they need to use your service?

Education: Do your prospective customers appreciate and understand the how and why of an e-wallet and how it fits with the products and services they need?

Trust: There’s no inherent trust in any segment that has never handled a technology before; they must be shown and be allowed to feel the actual benefits of the solution, and then they’ll trust you to take them on a journey.

Once the three strands are solid, it allows customers to take control of their own destiny and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, it’s important for fintechs to be brave enough to take baby steps. Fintechs need to make small changes and add incremental developments that trigger large changes over time. The ingenuity of the human spirit inevitably means that as people are given a runway, they figure out how to build planes and take off into their own destinies. This may sound wishful, but consider this:

A few short years ago, 70% of Mukuru’s network trade was cash-to-cash, meaning cash was sent and the user went and extracted that cash on the other side – traditional remittance, as it were. Today, that’s been turned around: only 49% of the trade on our platform is cash-to-cash, yet the total number of customers has grown in leaps and bounds. This powerful metric suggests that if a fintech gets all the elements right and makes small and incremental changes that customers trust and feel comfortable using, then the saying “cash is king” is well and truly on its last legs.

While fintech is continually evolving, there are a few prominent themes that have underpinned its immense growth and success over the past few years, and which will remain important in 2022.

Remittances

Remittances remain the lifeblood for many Africans who have left their homes to work in other regions. They are an important source of income, and even funding. Remittances provide a living, an education and even the means to start up micro enterprises. Fintechs that make remittances easy and convenient, meaning that the service is found where and when they need it, will continue to make strong inroads. Platforms that integrate various digital services which allow the users of the remittance service to build increasingly sophisticated financial habits, will lead the pack.

Dual-sided networks

Dual-sided networks are going to continue gaining prominence. Perhaps the best way to describe a dual-sided network effect in the context of fintech is by way of example. Imagine a fintech remittance platform such as Mukuru having more than 10 million customers, half of whom have used the platform in the past 12 months. Then, imagine the hundreds of thousands of merchants out there who only accept digital forms of payment and who would previously have had no access to these Mukuru customers, who prior to Mukuru would have had no way of transacting with them.

Now, the dual-sided network effect is when a platform such as ours has all these customers that can integrate into all these merchants: we can facilitate payment linkages between them such that the merchants now have millions of customers they’ve never spoken to and all these customers now have access to an array of offerings they were previously excluded from, such as sneakers from Takealot or profiles on Netflix.

This is what we mean by digital and financial inclusion, because previously they may well have had the new smartphone, but they were not part of the digital ecosystem.

Partnerships

Partnerships will become even more important, and we’re certainly seeing more businesses partnering with like-minded companies to either combine a platform that has customers with particular products, or vice versa. Partnerships lean on the respective strengths of each platform or business and provide access to an array of new customers. All partnerships need to be pursued to meet real and pressing needs of customers.

Agility

Agility is a term that is bandied about nowadays, but for a fintech to be successful it needs to be built into the company’s DNA. There are spectacular high-profile failures and start-ups that didn’t gain the traction they expected. In most cases this arises from developing a shiny solution and then waiting for the market to come to you. It is vital to listen to what the customers want and then anticipate how that will drive a shift in customer behaviour so that you can grow into that space and stay relevant. This means development cycles are quicker as companies use more and more sophisticated means of communicating and listening to their customers.

Andy Jury is group CEO of Mukuru, an Africa and emerging markets-focused money-transfer platform

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Airtel Africa Launches Africa-wide Money Transfer Service Through Mukuru

July 25, 2020

Airtel Africa plc, a provider of telecommunications and mobile money services in 14 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and Mukuru, one of Africa’s largest remittance organisations, have announced a partnership which will enable Mukuru customers to instantly send cross-border transfers directly to Airtel Money customer wallets in 12 African countries.

This partnership will be particularly beneficial for customers making intra-Africa payments from Southern Africa where Mukuru has a leading presence. Customers also benefit from no longer having to physically go to an Agent to receive cross-border payments.

Once Airtel Money customers receive the funds, they can be used to pay utility bills, goods and services, transferred to family or can be cashed out at any of Airtel Africa’s exclusive branches, kiosks and agents.

Raghunath Mandava, CEO, Airtel Africa, commented “This partnership empowers those without a bank account to be included in the formal financial ecosystem and to move money conveniently, seamlessly and securely. At a time when intra-Africa cross-border payments are of strategic importance, we are pleased to be working together on cross-country mobile money transfers, while also supporting local economies.”

Andy Jury, CEO, Mukuru, confirms: “This partnership exemplifies the collaborative spirit in which Mukuru is engaging with other industry leaders to provide universal access to cash and digital financial services across the continent. The enablement of digital money transfers between Mukuru and Airtel Africa customers means we can offer greater choice to the hardworking diaspora when providing for their families back home. The freedom to choose the solution best befitting your personal circumstances is pivotal to true economic empowerment.”

The partnership, subject to local regulatory approvals, will initially launch in Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It will then roll out to subsequent Airtel Money markets.

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.

Global Money Transfer Company WorldRemit Enters Zimbabwe Through Local Startup Mukuru

June 10, 2020

WorldRemit is gradually biting off a majority share from Africa’s booming money remittance market. Apart from presence in more than 9 African countries (including Botswana, Central African Republic, Chad, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Togo and Zambia), the global online money transfer service has announced a partnership with Mukuru, one of Africa’s largest remittance providers to broaden options for cash pick up in Zimbabwe. The partnership will be instrumental in bringing world-class financial services to Zimbabweans and generating new synergies for African financial inclusion.

“We are excited to be able to extend Mukuru’s valuable pay-out footprint to more customers, and to harness this opportunity with WorldRemit’s global reach to expand our fast-growing global presence — while simultaneously creating new opportunities for customer-led innovation on the continent. These types of synergies bring immediate value to our customers, and alleviates their day to day challenges with user-friendly solutions,” Andy Jury, CEO, Mukuru says.

Here Is What You Need To Know

With many families in dire need of financial resources during the coronavirus pandemic, the partnership enables WorldRemit customers in over 50 countries including the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe to send money to their loved ones far and wide in Zimbabwe.
Money recipients in Zimbabwe are now also able to collect their WorldRemit remittance at any of Mukuru’s 120 orange booths and branches, which are located across the country in both rural and peri-urban areas.
The money transfer service is operational for six days a week and offers cash in US dollars. Customers will not have to endure long queues, and can collect their cash quickly and safely.
The relationship between WorldRemit and Mukuru is particularly significant in that both players are simply leveraging their existing capabilities and resources — and neither company has to invest or generate new resources to make it work.
The WorldRemit platform is 100% digital pay in for customers across the diaspora in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Europe in particular, while Mukuru is an established remittance provider in Zimbabwe.
With reportedly over 30 million cross-border transactions over the last decade, Mukuru is one of Africa’s remittances-led FinTech companies.

“Having recognised the challenges that so many Zimbabwean families are facing, both of our leadership teams were able to cut to the chase and find a solution very quickly — whilst still meeting all the financial and regulatory requirements of the partnership,” added Jury. “We are delighted that both Mukuru and WorldRemit can come together to be part of the solution for so many of our Zimbabwean customers.”

Chart: The World's Top Remittance Recipients | Statista — *WorldRemit entering Zimbabwe through Mukuru will hope to bite off a larger portion of transactions from Africa’s remittance market*.

A Strategic Partnership

Pardon Mujakachi, Head of Sub Saharan Africa and Country Director for Zimbabwe at WorldRemit says:

“We have witnessed an increasing demand as more Zimbabweans are using our digital app to send money to their loved ones. Through this partnership we are able to drive our service further and wider, providing access to remittances even in small towns and growth points across the country. We want to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to our service which offers a fast and convenient user experience, affordability and easy access to cash.”

“WorldRemit is 25% more affordable than the traditional players and banks. Our extensive cash collection network, flexible cash collection hours and lower fees, offer value for money to our customers. This proves us to be the most affordable means of sending money to Zimbabwe.” says Mujakachi.

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

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

Mukuru Acquires Fintech Zoona’s Assets in Malawi

May 8, 2020

One of Africa’s largest money operators and remittance companies, Mukuru, has confirmed the acquisition of Zoona’s operational assets in Malawi along with the technology systems that support its Malawian operations. Mukuru did not reveal how much it paid to acquire Zoona’s Malawian technology systems or assets. According to the company’s LinkedIn profile, Mukuru’s headquarters are in Cape Town and it was founded in 2004. US based Emerging Capital Partners is one of the company’s key investors.

Zoona, which has worked with Mukuru for four years as a partner, is an Africa-based fintech that enables entrepreneurs to bring safe and reliable financial services to underserved communities in Malawi and elsewhere. Mukuru did not reveal how much it paid to acquire Zoona’s Malawian technology systems or assets. According to Mukuru’s CEO Andy Jury said the acquisition will extend Mukuru’s African footprint deep into the urban and rural areas cross Malawi. “This acquisition will bring the benefits of our extensive products and cutting-edge technology to the citizens of Malawi – giving them better options and safe mechanisms to send money to loved ones and ultimately uplift their communities,” he said.

Following the acquisition, Zoona Malawi’s agents will operate as Mukuru agents benefiting from a wider product range to offer customers backed by Mukuru’s trusted and established brand name. In addition, agents will benefit from being part of the Southern African Development Corporation (SADC) regional network, increasing their regional exposure and potentially boosting earnings over time.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry