Visa has opened applications for the fifth cohort of its Africa Fintech Accelerator, a 12-week virtual program aimed at supporting early-stage fintech startups across the continent.
Why it matters
The accelerator is part of Visa’s broader commitment to boost Africa’s digital economy, including a pledge to invest $1 billion in Africa by 2027.
Driving the news
- Fintech startups with a market-ready product or minimum viable product (MVP) are eligible to apply by August 15.
- Visa also revealed the 22 startups selected for Cohort 4, which includes companies from 12 African countries working on solutions in:
- Cross-border payments
- SMB digitization
- AI-driven payments
- Climate insurance
- Social commerce
- Neo-banking
- Payroll and lending
By the numbers
- 64 startups have participated in the first three cohorts since the program’s 2023 launch.
- Their collective portfolio value is estimated at $1.1 billion.
- These startups operate across 31 markets in Africa.
- 62% of participating startups included women in leadership roles.
- Alumni have raised over $55 million in funding post-program.
- The accelerator helped generate $3 million+ in new revenue during the training period.
What they’re saying:
“Visa is committed to fostering innovation and promoting access and inclusion within Africa’s financial ecosystem,” said a Visa spokesperson.
“We are proud to introduce the participants of Cohort 4, whose diverse initiatives are set to deliver meaningful benefits to individuals, merchants, and businesses.”
Startups shortlisted for Cohort 4
- Zazu (South Africa): Zazu is a neobank for African small and medium-sized businesses, providing digital business accounts, expense management, invoicing, and bookkeeping tools in one platform.
- BigDot.ai (Zimbabwe): BigDot is helping SMEs use less cash through digital transformation, seamless checkouts, and blockchain-powered financial inclusion.
- ChatCash (Zimbabwe): ChatCash enables African SMEs to sell and get paid through popular messaging apps using AI-powered, multilingual tools. The platform integrates payments, customer engagement, and business resources.
- Credify Africa (Uganda): Credify is bridging the trade finance gap for African importers by providing seamless access to capital, logistics, and cross-border payments.
- Flend (Egypt): Flend is a digital NBFI for SME finance, providing tech-enabled, data-driven solutions to close the financing gap for underserved businesses in North Africa.
- Hsabati (Morocco): Hsabati is a platform that helps businesses manage operations, enabling data collection and ecosystem scoring to facilitate financing through partner banks.
- IPT Africa (Mauritius): IPT Africa provides cross-border payments solutions, including payroll processing, real-time FX pricing, and same-day bulk payments.
- Lemonade Payments (Kenya): Lemonade’s white-label digital payments solution empowers businesses with secure, blockchain-powered wallets, without compromising user data.
- Maishapay (Democratic Republic of Congo): Maishapay is an all-in-one B2B financial platform offering payroll solutions, digital payments, and POS terminals to help streamline transactions.
- MNZL (Egypt): MNZL is expanding access to credit through a digital platform for asset-backed financing by tapping into consumers home and car equity.
- Motito (Ghana): Motito is an asset financing marketplace that provides alternative payment options for customers to purchase essential assets.
- Muda (Kenya): Muda is a digital asset exchange and OTC platform focused on cross-border payments and stablecoin liquidity solutions for African businesses and fintech’s.
- mystocks.africa (Botswana): Mystocks.africa simplifies investing across African stock markets by providing a unified platform for trading all African stocks.
- OKO Finance Ltd (Ivory Coast): OKO distributes automated climate insurance, allowing farms to boost their climate resilience and banks to de-risk their investment in agricultural projects.
- PressPayNg (Nigeria): PressPayNg is an education-focused fintech platform that provides banking, financing, savings, and insurance solutions to help parents, guardians, youths, and students fund education.
- Sevi (Kenya): Sevi streamlines B2B payments within non-digital value chains. This optimizes efficiency in credit, payments and reconciliation for the supplier, and access to stock and stock financing for small retailers.
- Shiga Digital Inc (Nigeria): Shiga Digital provides simplified access to decentralized financial solutions for the African market with a purpose-built Defi account.
- ShopOkoa (Kenya): ShopOkoa provides AI-driven credit and payment solutions to small- and micro-enterprises in Africa. It operates as a membership-based system combining daily savings, revenue-based financing, and automated cashflow tracking.
- Startbutton (Nigeria): Startbutton is a merchant of record helping businesses expand across Africa by paying and receiving local currency payments from their customers in a tax efficient and compliant manner, and without the need to setup local offices.
- Twiva (Kenya): Twiva is a social commerce platform where businesses market and resell their products and services through social media influencers.
- Vittas (Nigeria): Vittas empowers healthcare providers with access to tailored financing, digital tools, and payment solutions, enabling them to improve patient care.
- Woliz (Morocco): Woliz is a fintech ecosystem transforming nano-stores into digital hubs with loyalty rewards, payments, and AI-driven operations.
What’s next
The program will culminate in an in-person Demo Day, where startups will pitch to investors, ecosystem players, and funding partners.
Learn more about other African tech startups on Labari Insights, our data repository for tech in Africa: insights.techlabari.com
