Fintech companies have been a hot commodity in the African tech scene and for good reason.
Fintechs are disrupting the financial and banking services sector, one of the world’s slowest-moving and least-innovative industries. The industry is maturing and some players have been fortunate enough to close significant funding rounds despite the funding winter. In 2022, Africa’s fintech industry welcomed billions in venture capital funding, but startups on the continent have been suffering a venture capital winter since.
There are numerous fintechs scaling across Africa and making incredible headway in changing the face of the finance industry. The Kenyan Wall Street has been closely following the sector for several years and our team of analysts have identified a few companies that are expected to make big waves in 2025 across the continent.
Moniepoint
One of only two African fintechs to achieve ‘Unicorn’ status in 2024, Moniepoint has witnessed tremendous growth in its home market (Nigeria). In 2023, Moniepoint got the go-ahead from the Competition Authority of Kenya to acquire Kopo Kopo, a Kenyan fintech startup offering payments and credit solutions to Kenyan companies.
Given Moniepoint’s Nigeria success story and its acquisition of Kopo Kopo, TKWS analysts expect to see the fintech doubling down on its activities in Kenya in addition to potentially exploring other African markets that have mature banking and payments infrastructure.
TYME Bank
Fresh off of a $250M USD Series D funding round in December 2024, TYME Bank is the latest fintech company to achieve ‘Unicorn’ status in Africa. While headquartered in Singapore, the South African-founded digital bank is focused on building digital banking solutions across emerging markets in addition to providing innovative functionality to depositors including Buy Now, Pay Later.
TYME Bank currently has 15 million customers across Singapore and South Africa. With a new funding round led by the owners of Nubank, Latin America’s largest digital bank, the company is expected to diversify geographically in addition to eyeing an IPO in the United States in 2028.
Kora
Embedded fintech is set to witness a continuous rise and Kora is one company set to benefit from this growing field. The Canadian and Nigerian fintech founded in 2017 helps online retailers and businesses to seamlessly integrate payment infrastructure into their websites with little to no need for heavy coding.
Kora’s payments infrastructure allows for the collection of cross border payments, servicing a space worth many billions of dollars each year.
Minka
Based out of Bogota, Colombia, Minka works closely with various financial ecosystem players (such as central banks, clearing houses, banks, etc.) to ensure proper and transparent settlement of funds between organizations. Minka can serve a variety of use cases and is currently working on a variety of high-level projects in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and Cameroon.
While Minka has not fully announced many of its projects, Minka’s team has hinted at some groundbreaking announcements in early 2025 which are expected to dramatically change the financial landscape in the countries it is operating in.
Yellow Card
Africa’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is expected to do big things in 2025. It is hot off a $33M USD Series C funding round led by Blockchain Capital and including participation by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s Block, Inc. and Winklevoss Capital among others.
As crypto excitement mounts globally amidst the recent election of Donald J. Trump as the nextPresident in the United States, Yellow Card is expected to capitalize on crypto’s diminishing industry taboo to scale its Pan-African cross-border payment rail and treasury management solutions.
NALA
NALA is Tanzania’s darling startup enabling the African diaspora to send remittances back home affordably and conveniently.
Conclusion
While many still detest the slow venture landscape in Africa, some of the world’s best companies come out of tough economic times. AirBnb was founded in 2008 amidst the US financial crisis in addition to Slack (2009), WhatsApp (2009), and Uber (2009).
Regardless of macroeconomic conditions, some of the world’s greatest companies come out of rough economic times – maybe one day some of the fintechs on this list will be among the list of the greats as well.
