Denis Opudo
African startups stand a chance to benefit from the 2018 Ecobank Fintech Challenge. Ecobank is one of the leading banks in Africa. It carries out its operations across 36 African countries. The bank aims at using the challenge to pitch, partner with and support the most promising fintech startups in Africa. The shortlisted startups will get mentoring programs from experienced industry mentors. Furthermore, they will access the Ecobank’s banking ecosystem.
Those who emerge as winners will get an opportunity to pitch their solutions at Ecobank’s Innovation Fair. This will be witnessed by industry insiders and decision makers. Moreover, the bank will get into commercial partnership with selected startups. The partnership is aimed at growing and scaling the selected startups. Selected startups will get a chance to collaborate with Ecobank in rolling out their ideas across 33 countries. The bank’s inaugural challenge took place in 2018 where 20 winners got an invitation to attend an innovation fair and awards ceremony. The ceremony took place in Lome, Togo the Ecobank’s headquarters in June 2017.
The application for the challenge is ongoing and will close on 23rd May 2018. The application is open to all the African fintech startups. There will be six different areas of interest during the challenge. Startups are allowed to choose on their area of interest during the application. The six areas are as follows;
SME Intra-Africa trade platform
These are solutions that help improve e-commerce and international trade process. They do that by aiding anti-money laundering and KYC requirements.
Multi-channel collections ecosystems and corporate payments
These are solutions that give many channel experiences solution giving one functionality and security for payments, supply chain finance and trade finance, liquidity management, collections, wallet, with multiple redemption points, mobile banking, ATM and bank account.
Remittance
These are solutions that increase inflow in the continent from the rest of the world or giving of real-time transfers at secure, pocket-friendly rates across borders or within Africa.
Digital sales and marketing
The bank will be looking at solutions to drive sales or marketing of its products. The products are like internet banking, USSD, Chatbot and Ecobank Mobile App. The solution must promote adoption and usage of Ecobank QR Push Payment at locations and stores, Xpress Agency Banking, and Xpress Cash Token on agent locations or ATM.
Digital on-boarding, Know Your Customer and opening account
Here they will be looking for solutions that solve digital or remote authentication of clients data. This will aim at ensuring instant opening of the account. This includes identification document, matching, and verification with photographs, GPS address authentication services.
Offline mobile-mobile payments also known as dead zones
These are solutions that help customers to perform mobile transaction services without 2G, SMS or internet connectivity. The solutions will basically use offline wallet systems.
