More than half the world's mobile-money users are in Africa. In the 2010s millions of Africans who had passed up bank accounts went straight to mobile-money wallets. The African fintechs whose technologies helped drive this trend are now focused on making it easier to move money into, out of and around African countries. McKinsey, a consultancy, expects African fintechs to rake in $47bn in annual revenue by 2028, much of it from cross-border payment products.
Sending money abroad through a traditional bank is slow and expensive everywhere. For Africans it can be especially painful: most international transfers require converting money into dollars at poor exchange rates, doing mounds of paperwork, paying multiple sets of fees and contending with differing verification rules. Driving across borders with a suitcase full of cash can be quicker than a bank transfer.
The biggest fintechs have registered offices and licences in multiple African countries, allowing them to bypass banks. Wave, of Senegal, provides payments across Francophone west Africa. Nigeria's Flutterwave serves more than half the continent. Some fintechs use stablecoins—dollar-pegged cryptocurrencies—to avoid exchange-rate losses. Onafriq, a South African fintech, collaborates with MTN, a mobile-network operator, to allow instant cross-border payments using mobile money.
Between 2015 and 2025 the average cost of sending money to African countries fell from 8% of the transaction value to just under 6%. Fintechs are increasingly targeting members of Africa's relatively wealthy diaspora, offering services to send money home, buy property on the continent or pay for purchases while on holiday. The share of Africa's GDP made up by remittances, currently at 3.5%, is growing.
Poor internet penetration in many countries hampers uptake. So does regulation: governments often withhold licences or invent new taxes to target the nascent sector. A new regional payments-settlement system was supposed to ease pan-African transactions, but slow and patchy implementation may mean it amounts to nothing.
You cannot use your friends and have them too.