Are you still procrastinating on when to start up your own business? Companies are already talking in billions. In, fact the fintech industry is one you should be looking at right now.
The fastest growing industry in Africa, the fintech industry, could generate revenue as high as $30 billion by 2025.
This was stated in the McKinsey & Company report, after the African fintech raised over $13 billion in 2021 alone.
According to the report, the success of fintech companies is fueled by factors like; increasing smartphone ownership, declining internet costs, expanded network coverage, among others.
The report said African fintech has a significant impact on day-to-day life on the continent and with its current upward trend it can be perfectly poised to rapidly advance Africa’s global competitiveness with an increase in the exporting of fintech services globally.
These fertile grounds do have challenges. Regulatory uncertainties and differences between countries are a bottleneck, throttling the expansion of financial inclusion in Africa.
This has led to the continent’s fintechs calling for a Pan-African regulatory body to define comprehensive regulatory policies for regions rather than countries.
Protecting Customers From Being Exploited
Certain governments and the private business sector continuously work on providing regulatory policy frameworks for businesses, customers, and economies with the current focus on regulations – digital-only banks and fintech are influenced by but independently regulated from the traditional financial system regulations.
Also, anti-Money Laundering Scrutiny – more regulatory bodies are insisting on compliance herewith, worldwide there is a clamp down on non-compliant companies.
This requires the verification of information received from the client to avoid fraudulent, terrorist.
Also, it will help avoid other illegal activities being facilitated, supported by other processes such as Know Your Customer.
It said consumer centrism – fintech must be vigilant in consumer education, especially the consequences of services and products that did not exist before, protecting the consumer from being exploited.
On protection of privacy and security of data, it said stored personal consumer information is susceptible to cyberattacks.
Fintech companies must comply and have the necessary security systems and protocols to secure sensitive data.
The Global fintech Index of 2020 lists the top 100 fintech ecosystems, four sub-Saharan African cities’ features that are leading this sector, namely Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos and Cape Town.
Basically, these cities account for most of the continent’s fintech start-up funding.
