Africa’s fintech space has attracted a lot of attention over the past few years, but it is not news that startups are still struggling to deliver high-quality products.
However, they seem to be doing quite well compared to conventional banks, which face challenges like inheritance spending structure and large lack of management skills. Appzone is a fintech software provider. It is one the few companies that create proprietary solutions for these financial institutions and their banking and delivery services. Today, the company is announcing that it has stopped investing $10 million in the series.
Typically African financial institutions use foreign technology solutions to solve their problems. However, pricing, flexibility in innovation and lack of local technology support always come to the fore. This is where Appzone got its sweet spot. The company, based in Lagos, Nigeria, founded in 2008 by Emeka Emetarom, Obi Emetarom, and Wale Onawunmi. Appzone will definitely play a game different from other African functions. One obvious difference is that the company works as a competent between banking and payments (payment rails and core infrastructure).
It started as a service company to provide custom software development services to commercial banks. In 2011, the company launched its first core-banking product targeting microfinance institutions. The following year, Apple introduced the first product (branchless banking) for commercial banks. It went live on 2016 mobile with it is mobile and internet banking services and launches the instant card issuance product in 2017.
In 2020, the company launched a service centered on the end-to-end automation of the lending payment activities of banks and blockchain switching. “We launched Appzone with the intention of creating innovative local solutions for banking and financing across the continent,” CEO OB Emetarom told TechCrunch. “The focus was on achieving our expertise as we were able to create technology owned by both departments.” The Appzone platforms use banks together with 18 commercial banks in Africa and more than 450 microfinance banks; they collect annual transaction value and disbursement of $2 billion and $300 million in annual loan disbursements.
