[Transcript] #61: MFS Africa (Onafriq) - How the payments network hub is connecting telcos & financial institutions to increase interoperability across Africa and beyond
Transcript for podcast originally recorded on February 02, 2023
In Feb 2023, we explored the story of Onafriq (MFS Africa). Onafriq is a leading pan-African digital payments platform connecting over 500 million mobile wallets and 200 million bank accounts across 40+ countries. It enables cross-border payments, remittances, and financial services for individuals and businesses. The platform supports interoperability of financial systems within and outside Africa, facilitating seamless transactions across various financial platforms.
Onafriq has notably utilized M&A, such as the acquisition of Global Technology Partners (GTP), to scale its operations and expand its reach. Its API hub allows integration for fintechs, banks, and global partners to access African financial ecosystems.
Companies discussed: Onafriq, Safaricom (M-Pesa), Opay, Flutterwave, Paystack, MTN, Airtel, Orange, Chipper Cash, Ecobank, Safaricom, Homesend, TransferTo, MasterCard & Visa
Business concepts discussed: Financial interoperability, mobile money (agency banking), banking regulation, acquisition strategy, payment processing, payment gateways & closed-loop payment networks
Enjoy!
Olumide Ogunsanwo
Personal: Website
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Adamantium Fund: African B2B fund focused on education, health, finance, food and transportation (Website & memo)
Firedom Book: Financial Independence stories of African Immigrants (Website, Substack Newsletter & Buy: Print, eBook or Audiobook)
Transcript starts here
[00:00:00] Olumide Ogunsanwo: Today we're going to talk about MFS Africa. We'll explore the MFS Africa story across the following areas: (1) African payments context, (2) MFS Africa's early history, (3) product and monetization strategy, (4) competitive positioning and potential exit options, and finally, (5) our views on its overall outlook."
This episode was recorded on January 29th, 2023. MFS Africa time, let's go.
[00:00:23] Bankole Makanju: Excellent. How are you doing?
[00:00:23] Olumide Ogunsanwo: I feel good. It feels like we haven't done FinTech in a while and everyone loves FinTech. I guess we sort of covered it on the creator round table, It came up a lot indirectly we didn't cover directly.
[00:00:36] Bankole Makanju: Exactly. Let’s get into it. MFS is a payment gateway. They connect centers, recipients and service providers across Africa's fat growing, yet fragmented, mobile payments,
[00:00:54] Olumide Ogunsanwo: [Laughter] Fast growing. That's a Freudian slip.
[00:00:56] Bankole Makanju: If you're an investor, if you're a shareholder, you definitely think FinTech is fat growing.
[00:01:02] Olumide Ogunsanwo: If you know, you know. That's about the famous line. MFS Africa is the largest digital payments hub in Africa. That's one definition I found not super helpful if you ask me let's go. MFS Africa is a Pan-African payments gateway that connects wallets across mobile money platforms through its APIs. That sounded better to me. But if you just wanna use MFS Africa's corporate speech on their website, let's use that one.
MFS Africa is a leading digital payments gateway supported by a multicultural, multi-talented agile team from over 30 different nations that is driven to create access to a borderless world. Wow. Man. Corporate speak, I don't even, I dunno what any of that means. Okay. Let's just read my favorite. That actually makes sense.
This is the one we're gonna go with. MFS Africa is a payments network hub that Connects 400M+ mobile money wallets, 200M+ bank accounts, 200k+ agents and 35+ countries to enable cross-platform, cross-currency, cross-border payments for mobile network operators, banks, fintechs, maintenance companies, and merchants.
Sweet. That one makes sense. It's holistic. I like it.