Behind every transaction in Africa, from a mobile payment in Nairobi to a loan in Cairo, lies a growing web of collaboration between banks, telcos, and fintechs redefining how money moves. Our latest report, Banking on Innovation, co-authored with Lateral Frontiers, unpacks the partnerships reshaping how capital, data, and innovation flow across Africa’s financial systems, as well as the emerging models defining the next decade of fintech.
We examined three core fintech markets in Africa: Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, and looked at how these leading fintech ecosystems are co-developing innovative products and systems to reach underserved populations. In most markets, banks hold liquidity and regulatory access, telcos hold users and data, while fintechs hold innovation and API-driven agility. Together, the partnership between fintechs, banks and telcos is key to addressing fragmentation, a structural flaw in African finance, according to Nchedolisa Akuma, Senior Investment Professional at V8 Capital Partners.
How are these partnerships unfolding across key markets?
Once state-controlled and bank-dominated, Egypt’s financial sector now sees 36 banks driving growth, with the state prioritising financial inclusion and privatisation in recent decades, part of a broader effort to modernise an economy where cash has long been king. A standout example is the partnership between Banque Misr and valU , a fintech offering “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) services that make it easier for people to buy what they need and pay in instalments. By leveraging the reach and trust of a major bank with a fintech’s agility, this collaboration has helped more Egyptians access affordable, flexible financial products. By enabling Egyptians to pay in instalments via digital platforms, valU not only makes purchases more accessible but also brings more people into the formal financial system and encourages the uptake of digital transactions.
In Kenya, Africa’s poster child for mobile money, over 80% of adults use mobile money transfers. However, collaborations such as Citi, Visa, and Cellulant’s “Optimised Pay” solution are addressing the critical cash flow challenges faced by Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). The disbursement platform brings together Citi’s corporate client base, Visa’s payment network, and Cellulant’s pan-African infrastructure to deliver fast and flexible payments via both bank accounts and mobile wallets. Beyond SMEs, Optimised Pay helps shift more of Kenya’s supply-chain payments off cash and onto interoperable rails that can be scaled across borders over time.
In Nigeria, the financial services sector has transformed from a traditional, bank-dominated system with low inclusion rates to a tech-enabled ecosystem shaped by fintech startups and regulators. While the country’s fintech boom produced giants like Paystack and Flutterwave, these companies’ developer-friendly APIs have helped onboard thousands of other companies. A notable example is the partnership between the country’s leading payment provider, Paystack, key players such as Zenith Bank and Access Bank, and corporate merchants like Filmhouse and Konga, which aim to provide payment solutions for SMEs. The partnership enabled the rapid digital onboarding of thousands of SMEs and startups, helping them expand their reach and streamline payment processing. By 2020, this successful model had supported over 60,000 businesses, playing a critical role in transforming Nigeria’s payment ecosystem.
While the successful collaboration between fintechs and banks has proven useful, data infrastructure, cross-border integration, and risk sharing remain hurdles. Each sector sits on valuable but isolated data. To encourage smooth partnerships, this report advises founders to engage regulators early and thoughtfully to de-risk operations, tap into partnerships with banks and telcos for licensing and distribution, and prioritise data security and consumer trust as key differentiators.
Regulators are lending a helping hand to fintech-bank partnerships across the continent
Our report also examines the role regulators across Africa are playing in shaping the collaboration between banks and fintechs. In each country we examined, central banks have introduced regulatory sandboxes, digital lending rules, and data protection laws to encourage innovation while ensuring consumer safety. For instance, Egypt’s and Kenya’s sandbox offers a testing ground for new products. Nigeria’s Open Banking Framework mandates secure data sharing between banks and fintechs, enabling embedded finance and third-party integrations, critical for scaling new solutions.
While regulators across the three markets examined in our report are encouraging innovation and collaboration amongst telcos, banks and fintechs, the next phase of regulation should focus on regional coherence, according to Akuma from V8 Capital Partners: “A fintech licensed in Lagos should not need to reapply from scratch in Nairobi or Accra. A pan-African “passport” system under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could allow compliant fintechs to operate across borders while maintaining consumer safeguards,” she said. At the moment, the Central Bank of West African States has begun experimenting with shared licensing frameworks that could, if expanded, set the foundation for continental interoperability.
Today’s partnerships are early blueprints of what is possible when incentives are aligned between Africa’s financial institutions. Over the next decade, the real test will be whether the current partnerships between fintechs, banks and telcos can mature into shared rails for capital, data, and innovation that work across borders, not just within them. If banks, fintechs, and telcos can turn their current partnerships into interoperable platforms—with aligned regulation, trusted data-sharing, and deliberate risk allocation—they will not only deepen inclusion at home but also unlock a genuinely continental market for financial services. This would mean that a business in Kisumu, Kano, or Kumasi can plug into the same rails and tap the same quality of products, because the plumbing beneath them has finally been built to work together.
Geared towards regulators, financial institutions, and fintech entrepreneurs, read this report if you want to understand the current state of collaboration, the successful models being adopted, and the regulatory paths enabling or hindering innovation in Africa's financial sector.
