Connecting Africa explores how technology is changing financial services

Connecting Africa explores how technology is changing financial services

In a recent episode of Connecting Africa, CNN’s Victoria Rubadiri speaks with Kelechi Oti, one of the co-founders of Nigerian Fintech, StartButton. The number of Fintechs across Africa has tripled between 2020 and 2024, according to the European Investment Bank, and Nigeria has become a breeding ground for innovation.

Oti co-founded StartButton in 2023 with the aim of providing startups and online businesses with digital solutions in collecting customer payments and taxes. She explains, “StartButton enables merchants to pay and get paid across all of Africa in a compliant manner. Now Africa is 54 different countries and has different currencies, different regulation regimes, different ways taxes are being done. So, we help you to cover all of those headaches, get paid, pay, and we handle you the FX need as well.”

With numerous regulations and various currencies, StartButton is partnering with banks, telecos, and industry players in the countries it currently operates in. Oti explains about their “dynamic currency conversion” process, “We have partners in each market, so what that does is create two ways to combat this from a technology standpoint.”

Looking ahead to the future, Oti is betting on Africa’s financial future, “Africa's youthfulness is one of the key things driving the growth we see in Africa. I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people who are hungry for change to take Africa to the next level. I think if we're looking at the population around the world, Africa has the largest amount of young active people and we're seeing that in the founding space as well. And so, if this continues, and I know it'll still pick up, we’ll have a lot of transformations around the FinTech space.”

https://edition.cnn.com/business/markets/connecting-africa

This interview was featured in a recent episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.