23 startups for first Africa Fintech Accelerator programme selected by Visa

For its inaugural Africa Fintech Accelerator program, Visa has chosen 23 startups with the goal of empowering African startups with capital, connections, technology, and experience.

Through a rigorous three-month learning program centered on business growth and mentoring, the accelerator will help startups expand. After the program is over, Visa will help a few chosen startups out with capital investments, helping them get off the ground faster by giving them access to Visa’s resources and technology.

Among the five Nigerians in the cohort are Anchor, a company that gives developers tools, dashboards, and APIs to integrate and create banking products; Dojah, a company providing a digital onboarding and Know Your Customer (KYC) solution; Orda Africa is an African restaurant cloud operating system provider; Traction creates the next generation of payment solutions and business tools; and Moni offers low-interest loans to mobile money agent communities.

Four more are from Kenya: OkHi, which enables companies, banks, and fintechs to gather and confirm customer addresses; Duhqa, a B2B marketplace for consumer goods retail distribution; Power—which enables employees to take charge of their financial well-being—and Workpay—a payroll service for HR departments.

AgroCenta, which manages a mobile merchant platform for smallholder farmers, The Blu Penguin, which offers in-store Point of Sale (PoS) systems, AgroZÉ, which offers digital recordkeeping tools with embedded finance products to medium and small businesses, and Affinity Africa, which offers banking products to the underserved and unbanked, are Ghana’s other four representatives.

PayTic, a platform for risk control in payments and back-office operations, Chari, a B2B e-commerce and retail startup, and Weego, a mobility platform, are the three Moroccan companies that made the cut. Additionally, there are three representatives from South Africa: OnLife, an all-in-one wallet for money management; Franc, which lets users invest in top cash and equity funds; and Floatpays, an on-demand wage access platform.

Sympl (Egypt), which allows users to shop and pay later without incurring interest, PremierCredit (Zambia), an online microlending and investment platform, Eversend (Uganda), a payments platform offering cross-border payments, virtual cards, currency exchange, and crypto buying and selling, and Konnect (Tunisia) round out the cohort.

“Africa has one of the most exciting and admired fintech ecosystems in the world, bringing outstanding entrepreneurial talent to a young digital-first population that is growing fast,” said Alfred F. Kelly Jr., executive chairman of Visa. “Visa has been increasing our investments in Africa for decades and strengthening partnerships throughout the continent to support the next wave of innovation and growth. Our new Fintech Accelerator will bring expertise, connections, and investment to Africa’s best fintech start-ups so they can grow at scale.”