Previously, the startup facilitated disbursement through its intuitive dashboard, and now it has enabled disbursement through Slack, more daily-life platforms, and global businesses to unleash their utility by integrating with Chimoney’s super API.

Speaking about the rebrand and inclusion of new features, Atchima Munpakpien, the head of marketing inked that the new move is a part of ongoing efforts to simplify the website, improve the user experience, and offer more solutions to a wider range of users as she said.

“We’re upgrading the website experience as we move from a gift of choice or flexible gifting platform to payment infrastructure, covering ChiPay, which is an exclusive bulk payout system but still personalized and ChiConnect, a plug and play API for businesses to enable their users to cash out in-app assets to over 300 gift cards, airtime, mobile money, banks, and more. With the new design practices joining the force, the releases aim to facilitate easier navigation and faster transactions.”

To add more excitement to the integration world, one of the new features will allow businesses and organizations to send perks or payments that can be redeemed into anything—cryptocurrencies, mobile money, airtime, gift cards, and others—without leaving Slack.

The futuristic company is also preparing to join the 2022 Collision starting June 20. The Collision Conference is one of the premier technology conferences in North America which has seen some of the biggest founders and CEOs since the first edition in 2013.

For the 2022 edition, Nicolas Cary, CEO, and founder of Blockchain, Thomas Dohmke of Github, Chris Best of Substack, and Flori Marquez of Bloc-fi among other prominent founders, innovators, partners and are expected.

Commenting on the start-up’s participation in the conference, Uchi Uchibeke, Chimoney’s founder stated that as a company offering API for global payments and exchange of value between crypto and traditional finance, Chimoney is excited to connect with other global startups and share its ambition to increase the utility of crypto and stored value globally.

EDITOR’s NOTE: Part of this story is from an official press release shared to the Tech Point Magazine team.

In a Tweet by Fitspa – the association representing the Uganda and global fintech community, SafeBoda which trades as Guinness Tech Uganda limited has ben authorized by the central bank to issue small and medium electronic money transfer services in the country.

The new licenses come at a time when the company is rolling out SafeBoda Wallet, a mobile wallet for SafeBoda App users that accept s deposits and withdraws from agent points. Also, the SafeBoda App already has money transfer features where a customer can send money to another customer at no charge.

But with the new licenses, it means, SafeBoda Wallet will evolve to compete with already existing mobile money transfer services like MTN Momo, Airtel Money, and of recent Wave Uganda. Well, with the service already active on the SafeBoda App, customers will be able to do more at little or no charges on in-app transfer services.

In a statement by SafeBoda, the company aims at driving its growth in Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria where it operates, by scaling its hailing app to offer new payments and financial services to its customers, passengers, drivers and merchants in the regions it operates.

MTN MoMo is a fintech product providing consumers and businesses with an electronic wallet by enabling instant customer-customer money transfer, utility, and essential payments as well as access to digital and financial services through a single shortcode or MY MTN App.

At the end of June 2021, MTN MoMo had 48.9 million active users and over 581,514 merchants. The service also enables businesses to accept and make payments through the Momo Pay sub-service. And now, the new partnership will enable Flutterwave to offer MTN Mobile Money as a payment method to its business customers.

Through the new partnership, MTN and Flutterwave will positively contribute to the growing trend of increased mobile money usage, and penetration in Africa through improving local economies and livelihoods as well as create opportunities for customers across the continent.

Commenting on the partnership, Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Founder and CEO of Flutterwave, said:

“Africa has one of the highest growth rates for mobile money adoption and e-commerce in the world. It makes sense that we help provide a seamless payment method to support and ensure African businesses reap the full benefits of the e-commerce boom in the region. Our goal has always been to grow a new wave of prosperity in Africa by creating more avenues for businesses in Africa to accept payments. With this partnership, we can achieve this while creating endless possibilities for our customers.”

In agreement, Serigne Dioum, MTN Group Chief Digital and Fintech Officer commented on the new partnership and said:

 “As we progress on our journey to becoming the largest fintech platform in Africa, we will empower millions of businesses to embrace e-commerce in our markets to accept digital payments from MoMo consumers. We believe this is an enabler to accelerating digitized payments in Africa. Building strong ecosystems through partnerships is central to our platform strategy and we will continue to invest in expanding the reach of our platform to consumers and businesses in Africa.” 

Also, the new partnership will further expand on Flutterwave’s previous collaboration with MTN, beyond Uganda and Rwanda – with the potential of deepening the adoption of digital payments and e-commerce in Africa, a sector expected to reach $29 billion by 2022, according to Statista. 

According to the company’s Vice President of Payments and Financial Services, Tim Jamieson, a pilot for working capital loans will soon be launched as the firm awaits its National Payments Systems (NPS) license from the Bank of Uganda. This is part of the SafeBoda continued evolution that has seen it expand its service offerings from a mere Boda hailing App to a food and deliveries platform, into airtime and payments among other services it plans to avail to its customers.

Jamieson inks that priority for working capital loans will be given to female-run enterprises as a way of boosting women inclusion in businesses since they rank as the majority financially class of people in the market. Among other innovative products in the pipeline where the company hopes to put Women on the frontline include the SafeBoda payments ecosystem, open-loop products, savings products, and alot more.

In doing this, the firm aims to provide a cheap ecosystem that allows its customers to send money across networks for free and drastically reduce the cost of withdrawing these funds, according to Jamieson.

“If you want to send UGX 5,000 across networks can cost you over UGX 1,000 to do so or UGX 2,000 if you are sending to two to three different networks; we think there is more that needs to be done here. Mobile money ecosystems form such a large part of the back bone of Uganda and Africa as whole, so there should be continuous improvements in how this is delivered,”

Jamieson explains

He alludes that while cash is still a predominant method of payment in Uganda and across the African continent, the COVID-19 pandemic has steadily attracted people towards cashless transactions presenting a golden opportunity for Financial Technology Companies (FinTechs) to grow with new solutions.

However, Jamieson says that there is a need to work together as an industry to share knowledge, technology, and regulatory stack while working with regulators to solve existing problems.

“We have a huge unbanked and underserved population; we have a high cost of time and money to access financial services and at the same time we have this amazing fast growing ecosystem of FinTechs that is coming through locally. We need to bring them together so that we solve these problems as together,”

Furthermore, he commends the Bank of Uganda for the NPS, which he says has provided a stringent regulatory framework that will give customers confidence that they can transact with electronic money service providers, including FinTechs, in a safe and secure way.

Founded as a fintech startup, Chipper Cash was ready for Go on its launchpad in 2018 with Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghananian Majid Moujaled as the project founders.

As a cross-border person-to-person (P2P) money transfer service, Chipper Cash operates in over 7 countries across Africa: Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, SouthAfrica, and Kenya through its mobile app and website.

Prior to Chipper Cash’s funding from Bezos Expeditions, the fintech startup raised $13.8million in Series A funding 6months ago. In the same timeframe, the startup reached $100 million in processed monthly payments.

With 3million active users and 80,000 daily transactions, Chipper cash has now raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Ribbit Capital with the participation of Bezos Expeditions.

While Speaking to TechCrunch, the Chipper Cash Co-founder Ham Serunjogi said the startup plans to expand its products and demographic coverage to reach more prospective users with cutting edge services.

We’ll always be a P2P financial transfer platform at our core. But we’ve had demand from our users to offer other value services…like purchasing cryptocurrency assets and making investments in stocks

Serunjogi told TechCrunch on a call

In partnership with Drive Wealth––a US financial services company, Chipper Cash plans to add the ability for users to buy cryptocurrency assets like Bitcoin, Entheruem, on top of making investments in US stocks like Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Boeing, to its products catalog as Ham noted.

“We’ll launch [the stock product] in Nigeria first so Nigerians have the option to buy fractional stocks — Tesla shares, Apple shares, or Amazon shares and others — through our app. We’ll expand into other countries thereafter”

Ham Serujongi

In a similar fashion, business users will get more features out of Chipper cash the same way they can with free client-business platforms like MTN Momo Pay and Airtel Money Pay in Uganda with the introduction of API payment solutions as Ham further added.

“We’ve been getting a lot of requests from people on our P2P platform, who also have business enterprises, to be able to collect payments for sale of goods,”

Chipper Cash Funding: A New Future for African Tech Startups

Prior to backing Chipper Cash, Jeff Bezos’s interest in African Startups rises after a string of other investor acquisitions and funding to African based tech startups with the most recent being Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack––A Nigerian founded fintech startup for $200million.

In a like manner, Jeff Bezos joins Big tech players like Mark Zuckerberg who through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invested in Andela, then Jack Ma who often organises annual startup initiatives to fund investment-worthy ideas.

However, as an initial investment in the African tech ecosystem, Jeff Bezos’s $30m backing will drive global interest in African startups. By this fashion, a couple of multimillion exits have already been registered by several startups across the continent in 2020 alone.

Henceforth, Chipper Cash’s Series B funding with backing from Bezos Expeditions will help it launch into new markets and attract more users in countries in which it operates through its upcoming Cryptocurrency and Stock Investment features.

By Future projections, the Chipper Cash Co-founder Ham Erunjogi believes that the backing of his company by a notable tech figure like Jeff Bezos will not just help the platform grow, but will also benefit African tech startups that now have big tech investors searching for the next big startup ideas.

“It’s a big deal when a world-class investor like Bezos or Ribbit goes out of their sweet spot to a new area where they previously haven’t done investments.

Ultimately, the winner of those things happening is the African tech ecosystem overall, as it will bring more investment from firms of that caliber to African startups.”

Ham Serunjogi told Tech Crunch

Before mobile money operators headlined by MTN put a start to a new generation powered by Mobile Money, Money transfer was not just informal but also risky in Uganda.

In the presence of Banks, transferring money involved lining up in a queue and making sure the receiver account details are correct dot by dot or else the transaction would bounce. This has come to change and the continued growth of mobile money has not only changing lives, but also made money transfer easier.

In an Interview with Stephen Mutana – the General Manager MTN Mobile Financial Services, he shared his views on how mobile money penetration has expanded access to modern financial services to the rural and remotely unbanked (No access to banks) population.

What is your take on Fintech as far as financial inclusion is concerned?

Financial technologies promise to increase efficiency in delivering financial services and promote financial inclusion. Currently, mobile penetration in the country is higher than banking, which provides telecoms with an edge for marketing financial products to their clients through greater reach.

The service has been a major driver of financial inclusion in the last decade. Mobile money currently allows the unbanked people to use their phones as a bank account, to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money with their handset. People can also use mobile systems to pay utility bills and pay for goods in merchant shops.

Will the integration of Fintech and banks solve Uganda’s current financial inclusion paradox?

MTN believes that the power of partnerships should never be underestimated. As the central bank finalizes the National Payment Systems Act regulations, we foresee more possibilities for partnerships between banks, Fintech, and Mobile Network Operators that will further drive financial inclusion.

We improve on partnerships focusing on leveraging on existing infrastructure such as distribution systems sides for cost-effective operations. Partnerships that aim to drive innovation by exposing prebuilt APIs. For instance, access to accounts, transaction history, know your customer, or metadata enhancements. 

How has MTN managed to develop a seamless Digital payment Solutions system?

As a leading telecom operator on the continent, MTN has taken a global view on developing platforms. We are focusing more on solutions that enable many players or stakeholders to come on board or simply plug into our system.

 MTN launched the Open API (Application Programming Interface) two years ago to enable digital payments and collections. An API is a computing interface that allows two applications to talk to one another. For instance, when you go shopping online and use mobile money to settle a payment, you are using an API.

We have over 100 partners on the API platform. Active MTN Mobile Money users have grown to over 7.4 million. MTN Mobile Money services have grown to include bill payments, group salary payments, and school fees payments.

As the biggest Fintech in the country, what does MTN think about the National Payment Systems Law?

The National Payments Systems Act, 2020 (Act), effectively became law when it was assented to by the President in July this year. The law regulates operators of payment systems, payments service providers, issuers of payment instruments and issuers of electronic money.

We think the law seems to be comprehensive enough to plug some of the regulatory loopholes that have been prevalent among players in the payments space.

As the novel COVID-19 continues to spread, the race is on for innovators to design products that will add another layer of safety to support how payments for goods and services are settled.

Therefore, clear regulation and legislation are key in defining a sustainable approach within which payment service providers and consumers interact, exchange data, and make payments.

Give us your thoughts about how this law might impact the smaller Fintech in the country

With regulations in place, smaller Fintech firms which have enabled value addition on our products and services will find it a lot easier to integrate into MTN API platforms.

There will also be deliberate support from MTN to Fintech partners that work in areas of national development plan priorities such as healthcare, agriculture, job creation, and education.

Although we welcome the move to regulate these smaller Fintech firms a tiered regulatory approach will spur the innovation space. Innovation and technology have always moved faster than regulations.

What is the way forward for the smaller companies as far as the law is concerned?

We encourage our regulators to have a light touch to a regulatory approach that can improve access to technologies but also spur innovations. Most importantly though, regulating the sector will drive confidence and trust in Fintech products and services.

Customers and suppliers, both local and foreign will have greater clarity on products and safeguard customer funds. As a leading player in the Fintech sector, we think this will allow us a greater scale.

What are your final remarks?

The transformative role of mobile financial services will depend largely on whether stakeholders private, government or international organizations invest in approaches to solve everyday problems.

Also, partnerships are key if we want to progress. Behind the success story of mobile money, MTN has had partnerships with a number of Fintech firms that have enabled the technological capabilities needed to make the financial services a success.

Editor’s note: Part of this story is from an official Interview Release Shared with the Tech Point Magazine team.

Presently, MPESA hosts over 25million active customers in Kenya alone, and now, with a new rollout of USSD method, more subscribers will be able to use the service with or without a Smartphone.

According to the Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa, the company’s new USSD method will pair well with existing MPESA access methods which include the mySafaricom App, and SIM toolkit to making the service more acccesible.

We have embarked on a strategy to simplify our range of products and services for our customers and to provide them with an even better experience. M-PESA on *334# is our first solution as part of the ongoing strategy and it refines how our customers interact with the service. Customers now have the opportunity to truly confirm the details of a transaction before it can progress making reversals a thing of the past

Safaricom CEO, Peter Ndegwa

How to Use the New MPESA *334# USSD Shortcode

Dial *334# to get started

Just like any other USSD shortcode, you can use the new dedicated money transfer code by accessing your phone’s dial pad. Then, once you dial *334#, you’re presented with a list of MPESA services you can use, including:

• Send Money
• Withdraw Cash
• Buy Airtime
• Loans and Services
• Financial Services
• Lipa na MPESA
• My Account
• Mfuko wa Biashara

So, MPESA can now be accessed with a USSD code, this means, feature phone customers will be able to use the service with ease since the current Kenya Smartphone penetration rate stands at 40%.

At 60% the ratio of non-smartphone users outperforms the 40% Smartphone rate. Hence the new shortcode will allow more subscribers to access MPESA without screening through SIM toolkit or the mySafaricom App.

Recently, SafeBoda food became a reality as a service to allows customers order for their favorite dishes in a fashion similar to how rides are requested on the app

With a total of 4 services are currently offered by the Camp including Boda hailing, Food delivery, shipping (delivery), and Cashless transfer on the App, SafeBoda’s attempt in the money transfer league is next on its launch deck

SafeBoda Wallet is the new service currently accessible via a new domain SafeBodaWallet.com offering a waitlist option for customers who wish to have an early taste of the money transfer service.

Once launched, SafeBoda wallet will allow users to send, receive and withdraw money at low transaction rates. This means the service is a direct Fintech product being developed as a Mobile Money alternative

With such a wide catalog of services, will SafeBoda shine or it may follow the failed startups curve? Well, It’s a matter of time to see how the once fulltime Boda hailing camp will groove against its increasing competition lane.

The event attracts entrepreneurs, developers, investors, corporates, policymakers, hubs and Coworking spaces looking for ways to maximize their presence in the innovation and startup sphere.

Similar to other major startup events, the 2020 Africa Startup Summit will hold live Pitch sessions for founders to meet potential investors in a bid to win funding for their startup projects/Innovations.

In fact, the application portal is currently open to all founders who can apply to join the Pitch Live sessions. With over 600 delegates expected to turn up for the 3-day event, it’s agenda features conference sessions, workshops and networking events shaped down to these 8 categories

The Africa Startup Summit Agenda

• Investing In Africa
• Start-Up Showcase
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Health Tech
• Fintech
• Agri Tech
• MCommerce

The 3-day Summit will take place from February 4th-6th in Kigali Rwanda and will be feature two other Summits hosted during the same event timeline and these include:

The Africa Future Summit
The Africa Money & BlockChain Summit

At the moment, we have not received news of any Ugandan startups to feature at the event, but with the registration window currently open, you can visit the Africa Tech Summit website to fill out an application form to be apart of the event.

In Uganda, popular developer wings like Africa’s talking were the first to benefit from the Opened platform that now allowed them to create more solutions with Mobile Money integration to them.

Among most diverse Open API solutions, SafeBoda boasts as the most popular platform with a tale of performance to their cashless wing that is partially linked to a user’s mobile money account.

While the Open API window has already impacted developer solutions in Uganda, the programming interface is now available to over 5 counties in Africa with an ultimate prize for the top solutions developed on the Mobile Money API.

The new hackathon runs on MTN Group’s overall goal to bridge financial divide and overall winners of the new challenge will win over 2,500 dollars and a trip to the Ericson’s Innovation lab in Sweden.

This year’s Hackathon is run in partnership with Ericsson (MTN’s MoMo technology partner), to grand app developers based in Ghana, Uganda, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Zambia the opportunity to create innovative financial and transactional applications using the MTN MoMo API platform.

Unlike the recent OPEN API Challenge conducted by MTN Uganda that rewarded a couple of finalists with cash prizes in various solution categories and no direct target platforms. The new MTN Group Hackathon is tamed to only Mobile applications.

So, developers will have to create financial / transactional applications with Android and IOS development tools with a scent of the Mobile Money API as the top 12 applicants per country will qualify for the next round that will feature 2 weeks of re-developing their ideas.

The new Hackathon is restricted to residents of these 5 African countries namely, Uganda, Ivory Coast (Cote d’ Ivoire), Ghana, Cameroon, and Zambia as applications can be sent through the MTN developer portal Via: https://momodeveloper.mtn.com/