Visa Makes Strategic Investments in Four Leading African Fintech Startups
By Elizabeth Antidius Shumbusho | Africa Guardian
Visa, a global leader in digital payments, has announced strategic investments in four fintech startups that graduated from the inaugural Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator program. These investments reinforce Visa’s commitment to fostering digital innovation across Africa, advancing fintech growth, and enhancing financial inclusion on the continent.
The four startups, which span multiple African countries, are:
- Oze (Ghana): A provider of digital record-keeping tools and embedded finance products for SMEs, offering loan management systems and machine learning-based credit scoring to enhance lending decisions for financial institutions.
- Workpay (Kenya): A cloud-based payroll and HR platform supporting over 35 countries across Africa, streamlining payroll processing, time tracking, benefits administration, performance management, and Employer of Record services.
- OkHi (Nigeria): A smart addressing system that enables businesses to verify addresses digitally, improving delivery efficiency and access to financial services.
- ORDA (Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa): A cloud-based restaurant management software company, optimizing operations for over 1,500 restaurants with tools for order processing, inventory management, and financial services.
The Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator program, launched in 2023, provides Seed to Series A startups with mentorship, training, and opportunities for funding and partnerships. It aligns with Visa’s goal of investing $1 billion in Africa by 2027 to support the continent’s digital transformation.
Visa executives, including Godfrey Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Products, Partnerships, and Digital Solutions for Visa CEMEA, emphasized the importance of these investments in shaping the future of digital payments and supporting financial access and inclusion.
In addition, the second cohort of the program will have the chance to showcase their innovations during a Demo Day on December 2nd in Cape Town, South Africa, to an audience of investors and business partners.
The Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator program is supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud services to the participants. More investments and commercial partnerships with graduates are expected and will be announced soon.
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