{"id":1466,"date":"2021-04-11T22:00:35","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T22:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2021-09-27T05:57:01","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T05:57:01","slug":"m-pesa-ceo-savings-wealth-management-and-insurance-the-next-big-opportunities-for-fintech-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/2021\/04\/11\/m-pesa-ceo-savings-wealth-management-and-insurance-the-next-big-opportunities-for-fintech-in-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"M-Pesa CEO: Savings, wealth management and insurance the next big opportunities for fintech in Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There is still ample room for growth for mobile money throughout Africa, according to Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, interim CEO of M-Pesa Africa.<\/strong><\/p>

During a session at the recent Africa Financial Industry Summit, Lopokoiyit revealed year-on-year growth of around 20% is possible over the next five years.<\/p>

\u201cThe future of mobile money in Africa is fantastic. We are leapfrogging the card generation and going straight into digital financial services and payments.\u201d<\/p>

In 2007, Kenyan mobile network operator Safaricom launched the revolutionary mobile money platform\u00a0M-Pesa, which allows subscribers to transfer money between one another and deposit and withdraw cash through a network of agents. The service has since been expanded to several other African countries.<\/p>

For Lopokoiyit, future growth in the fintech space resides within the provision of financial health solutions.<\/p>

\u201cOn financial inclusion when M-Pesa started, it was about 23% [in Kenya]. In places like\u00a0Kenya, it is [now] 84% and above; in\u00a0Tanzania, it is about 70%. But while that has been really good, financial health has remained relatively low \u2026 at about 20%. In this area of fintech and mobile money, we need to start looking at areas in which we can provide savings, wealth management and insurance to be able to cushion customers on the shocks that they may have as they live their lives,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Covid-19, said Lopokoiyit, has, once again, made the impact of external shocks on financial health abundantly clear.<\/p>

He wants fintech players to be more innovative in developing these solutions and finding ways to make financial products \u2013 even those such as government bonds \u2013 available to a wider range of customers.<\/p>

Encouraging innovation and seeking strategic partnerships<\/h4>

M-Pesa is hoping to encourage this innovation by opening its platform even more to third party developers.<\/p>

\u201cHow do we encourage more developers and fintechs to come into our ecosystem and innovate?\u201d he asked. \u201cToday in Kenya, there are 29,000 developers on our platform. I would like to see 100,000 developers across Africa use our APIs to develop innovate products and services.\u201d<\/p>

Referencing the recent announcement that Silicon Valley financial services company\u00a0Stripe had acquired Nigerian start-up Paystack, Lopokoiyit explained partnerships of this nature are key for African fintech companies to get the valuations they deserve. \u201cIf you look at the talent that is being recruited from Africa by the big tech companies it shows that there is potential.\u201d<\/p>

The intention to establish M-Pesa as a super app that will feature various services such as transport, tourism, e-commerce and utility payments on one platform, was reiterated by Lopokoiyit.<\/p>

He believes partners would be able to publish their offering onto the super app, immediately adding value to the M-Pesa subscriber (more choice) and providing 40 million potential customers to the partner (access to market). \u201cI want customers to look at [the M-Pesa app] as much as they look at WhatsApp on a daily basis, or Instagram.\u201d<\/p>

Regulators are your friend<\/h4>

Lopokoiyit wants fintech companies and innovative start-ups to embrace engagement with regulators in their jurisdictions. \u201cWe work with them every single time. There is no product and service that we launch without the regulator. We actually have discovered it is better to, even on a concept stage, to engage the regulator.\u201d<\/p>

He further touted the importance of considering a regulator\u2019s perspective when they fulfil their mandate to protect the consumer from systemic risk. \u201cWe are commercially driven, we are about transforming lives, but the regulators look at it from a bigger and broader scope; they interact with other regulators across the world, so they do add a lot of value,\u201d he said.<\/p>

Covid \u2013 the great accelerant<\/h4>

Lopokoiyit is clear about the impact Covid-19 has had on digital\u00a0financial services; it has sped up adoption, as well as regulatory change and innovation.<\/p>

There are three phases when looking at the impact of Covid-19, he explained. First, there was the response period from March 2020 when most countries went into hard lockdowns. During this time, various businesses, regulators and governments were looking specifically at how they could assist communities. \u201cWe worked, for example, with central banks on lowering or zero-rating transaction fees below $10 to drive more financial inclusion,\u201d he said. Other projects included working with governments to enable disbursements of much-needed relief finance to vulnerable communities. \u201cThat showed the impact of mobile money especially in Africa.\u201d<\/p>

The second phase is one of rebuilding. \u201cThis is really critical for the future of businesses in Africa. As we open up, how do we look at SMEs and micro-SMEs; how can we help them get back to business?\u201d he asked. Possible interventions could be in one or all of four areas: capacity building; providing working capital at affordable rates; value-added services such as accounting solutions or simplifying cross-border payments; and improving connectivity at affordable rates.<\/p>

The third phase is reimagining. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen areas such as e-commerce really accelerate in the last nine months. Somewhere like Kenya, where we expected to be in 2025, has happened now.\u201d It is time to rethink how to enable businesses to operate in the new dispensation post-Covid-19.<\/p>

As an example, he listed the number of M-Pesa merchants at 157,000 in March 2020. By September of last year, this had already grown to 170,000. \u201cI think this shift is permanent towards the digital channels,\u201d said Lopokoiyit.<\/p>

Source<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is still ample room for growth for mobile money throughout Africa, according to Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, interim CEO of M-Pesa Africa. During a session at the recent Africa Financial Industry Summit, Lopokoiyit revealed year-on-year growth of around 20% is possible over the next five years….<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weshare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1472,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tablutech.co.mz\/pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}