In an interview with Bloomberg, the managing director of Finserve Limited Jack Ngare has revealed that the fintech firm is discussing a possible partnership with six Ethiopian banks in cross-border mobile and e-commerce payments.
Finserve is the fintech subsidiary of Equity Group which was officially launched few days ago. The firm has a separate board and management team from Equity Group and is behind Equity bank’s Eazzy Banking brand.
The possible collaboration comes at a time when various regional companies in the banking and telco sectors are eyeing Ethiopia as a possible investment option as the country opens up to foreign investment.
“We are looking to work with six banks to facilitate cross-border transactions, as well as e-commerce. We are going to be doing inward remittances, and that’s a good thing for Ethiopia because they need to attract a lot of the foreign exchange,” Ngare said adding that the fintech is already working with eight remittance companies.
According to the Addis Standard, Ethiopia remitted $816 million in 2017 and lost $1,681 million in remittance inflows.
Finserve is working with an Ethiopian sponsoring bank to get approvals and the discussions could take three to six months.
Taking Advantage of the Chinese Trade in Africa
The fintech is also eyeing payments for Chinese trade in the markets where Equity has operations and it has signed up with Chinese payments platform Alipay.com Co. Ltd and WeChat onto a merchant aggregation platform.
Ngare said the company aims to facilitate about Sh1 billion of the China and Sub-Saharan Africa trade which amounted to $120 billion in 2017.
“We see it as a major payments facilitator for all that Sino-Africa trade that’s happening, as well as tourists who are now coming to this part of the world,” he added.
