MFS Africa collects $100M to expand its digital payments gateway across the region –
Summary
The announcement is the icing on the cake for the company, which has made several significant acquisitions and investments in the last couple of years rarely matched by any fintech on the continent. And though calls are still expensive in Africa when compared to the rest of the world, the process of making them has become pretty simple thanks to mobile phone penetration and advancement in telecommunications. MFS has made a series of acquisitions and investments this past year The London-based company connects more than 320 million mobile money wallets across 35+ African countries and 700 corridors. The Johannesburg-based company had surveyed these businesses to understand their needs better and found out the most pressing issue they faced, asides from accessing loans, was sending and receiving payments to and from China. And coupled with minority stakes in smaller fintechs such as Julaya, Maviance and Numida; health insurance product Inclusivity and agritech platform Akorion, MFS Africa has done a decent job using investment and acquisitions — methods Okoudjou terms “inorganic growth” — to exert its influence across the continent.