FIBR, an initiative of the MasterCard Foundation, and partner Nomanin, South African-based Fintech company today opened the first annual African Fintech Unconference in Accra.
Romeo Kwame Bugyei, Managing Director of IT Consortium, a leading Ghanaian fintech solutions provider believes that the fintech industry has potential to drive financial inclusion in the country.
He added: “Currently, the Bank of Ghana doesn’t regulate the fintech industry. But the banks that the fintech companies are dealing with are being regulated by the BoG”.
Despite the absence of the regulation, fintech firms operating in the country are contributing greatly towards digitizing the Ghanaian economy with the introduction several solutions for the banking and telecoms industries, Mr Bugyei noted.
Vahid Monadjem, Chief Executive Officer of Nomanin which provides banks, mobile networks and mobile money operators with merchant tools and management platforms, was optimistic that if Fintech firms come together and do things together, they could improve financial serves in Ghana and other parts of Africa.
“This is the best move to bring financial services to the excluded”, he stated.
Ivan Mbowa, Chief Executive Officer of Umati Capital, a Kenya-based financial institution, noted that with the evolution of the fintech industry in Africa, it was possible to change the course of agric financing in the continent.
The two-day unconference brought together innovators, banks, telcos, thought-leaders and other established financial players in the dynamic fintech sector.
According to the organisers, the unconference sought to enable fintech companies to engage in smarter partnerships in a fast-moving industry that is ripe for consolidation in Ghana and across Africa.
Instructively, fintech is a portmanteau of financial technology that describes an emerging financial services sector in the 21st century. Originally, the term applied to technology applied to the back-end of established consumer and trade financial institutions.
Since the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the term has expanded to include any technological innovation in the financial sector, including innovations in financial literacy and education, retail banking, investment and even crypto-currencies like bitcoin.
African Eye Report
