KAMPALA — Cellulant, Africa’s leading payments company, won the Award for Excellence in Embedded Fintech at the 7th edition of the Africa Fintech Summit in Washington, D.C., alongside the Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank last month.
The awards ceremony dubbed the Annual Excellence in Fintech Award recognises African fintech stakeholders in a bid to support Africa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and drive financial inclusion and literacy through innovation.
Cellulant was recognised for building payment rails that enable access to financial services for both businesses, individuals, banking systems and mobile money providers ecosystem thereby offering a seamless payment experience across different markets in Africa. In Uganda specifically, Cellulant has been at the forefront of enabling businesses such as Nexus Lounge, Ecogas, Test and Fly Laboratories and many others to collect payments from or pay out to their customers. Currently, Cellulant processes $300,000 worth of payments daily in Uganda and facilitates $1b in transaction volume every month across different payment channels in Africa.
The Africa Fintech Summit brings together diverse stakeholders in the fintech space, offering an avenue for exploration of ideas, mobilisation of investments, and collaborations across sectors and geographies. The summit highlights the issues and opportunities in African finance and the entrepreneurs driving the revolution on the world’s stage.
Embedded finance is posited to accelerate growth and drive innovation across Africa. According to a report by Research and Markets, the embedded finance industry in Africa and the Middle East is forecasted to grow by 45.3% annually, leveraging on strategic partnerships to drive financial inclusion. By integrating financial products tailored to a user’s need within a business infrastructure, customers can access financial services faster and seamlessly.
Users gain access to money-related services when they need them.
Commenting on the recognition for its embedded fintech solutions, Cellulant’s Chief Executive Officer Akshay Grover stated, “The payments market in Africa is growing rapidly, ranking second globally with digital financial services as a key driver. Consequently, this raised the level of financial inclusion to 43% in 2017 from 23% in 2011. For Cellulant, by providing the rails for global, regional and local businesses to own their financial journey, we’re unlocking opportunities for the people to become financially independent and empowered. We’re proud of this award as it is a testament to the excellent work our teams are doing across the continent in enabling the rails that power online and offline payments for all businesses and their customers.”
Cellulant powers collections and payouts for thousands of businesses in various sectors across 35 countries in Africa. The company provides their customers with more than 280 locally relevant payment methods, including mobile money, cards & banks. Key among these customers include Emirates, Bolt, Citibank and Booking.com.
Cellulant’s single API payments gateway, Tingg, enables global, regional and local businesses to collect payments online and offline while allowing anyone to pay from their mobile money, local and international cards or directly from their bank. Tingg powers payments for 220 million consumers on a single inclusive network, allowing interoperability across Africa.
On the panel ‘Embedded Everything’ discussing the impact of embedded finance, Milkah Wachiuri, Cellulant Group’s Chief of Growth, stated, “Whereas access to financial services is still a distant reality for many on the African continent, the strides made towards financial inclusivity in recent years have been significant. Embedded finance drastically reduces the adoption friction of financial products, shifting the payment experience for customers, and enabling realisation of financial and economic inclusion goals for more Africans.’’
The Africa Fintech Summit (AFTS) honoured 14 standout African ecosystem stakeholders. AFTS’s US Partnerships & Sales Director, Sarah Chepkoech, revealed and awarded the prizes during the Networking Lunch Reception on Thursday, April 21st.
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