Author: Akin Naphtal

Canza Finance, a pioneering Wb3 neobank specializing in facilitating cross-border payments for African startups, has successfully closed a funding round, raising an amount of $2.3 million. The company plans to utilise the funds to acquire licenses from various financial regulators across Africa, while focusing on laying the groundwork for its innovative FX DeFi platform, Baki. With this latest funding round, Canza has now raised a total of $5.5 million, following a $3.27 million seed round last year. Led by Polychain Capital, the funding round saw participation from notable investors such as Protocol Labs, Avalanche’s Blizzard Fund, 99 Capital, Stratified Capital,…

After six years of operation in South Africa, Lyca Mobile has announced its decision to discontinue its operations in South Africa by January 9, 2024. Since its launch, Lyca Mobile has been instrumental in facilitating connections for South Africans with their friends and family, both locally and internationally. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, Lyca Mobile finds itself unable to sustain its service in South Africa. As a result, Lyca Mobile services are scheduled to cease operations on January 9, 2024. Customers currently using Lyca Mobile services are advised to transition to another mobile network operator before the specified date to…

Vodafone, the leading technology communications company in Europe and Africa, and Tech giant, Microsoft Corp., has recently announced a new, far-reaching 10-year strategic partnership that leverages their respective strengths in offering scaled digital platforms to more than 300 million businesses, public sector organisations, and consumers across Europe and Africa. The partnership is set to benefit more than 60 million customers and 5 million businesses across M-PESA’S eight markets with Microsoft hosting the M-PESA platform on its Azure cloud while also co-developing new cloud applications with M-PESA Africa. Through the partnership, the companies will collaborate to transform Vodafone’s customer experience using…

Nigeria’s fintech startups amassed $243 million in funding over the past year, marking the lowest among the “Big Four” African nations, according to a recent data survey. According to the report, despite a 16% funding decline in Nigeria for 2023, noteworthy startups like Moove ($66 million) and Lemfi ($33 million) successfully raised substantial amounts. Among the Big Four nations, Egypt took the lead in 2023, securing the highest fintech funding with $541 million, followed by South Africa ($367 million), Kenya ($301 million), and Nigeria ($243 million). While Nigeria experienced the highest number of deals reported in one year (60 deals),…

The Republic of Korea’s industry ministry is set to invest $2.26 billion (3 trillion won) in the robot sector with private businesses by 2030, with a goal of supplying 1 million robots to local industries. According to the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, the plan for intelligence robots will focus on securing 80 percent of key robot parts locally by 2030, compared with the current estimate of 44 percent. The robotics market in South Korea is expected to witness significant growth in the coming years. Furthermore, the revenue in the Robotics market is expected to showcase an…

Most recently, many international financial institutions, including multilateral development banks are partly funded by financial instruments known as promissory notes, most of which are still paper-based. While the current system provides the operational controls for member nations to make subscription and contribution payments to institutions like the World Bank, the custody of outstanding promissory notes can be digitised to address operational challenges and enhance efficiency. Project Promissa is a joint experiment of the BIS Innovation Hub Swiss Centre, the Swiss National Bank and the World Bank that aims to build a proof of concept (PoC) of a platform for digital…

Adaptive, a leader in bespoke electronic trading technology solutions, and ADS Securities, one of the Middle East’s largest leveraged brokers, have embarked on a significant collaboration. The partnership aims to develop ADSS’s flagship retail trading platform exclusively on the Cloud. This initiative is set to enhance throughput and resilience, offering an intuitive user interface accessible on both desktop and mobile platforms, thereby catering to a wide range of users. Adaptive’s expertise lies in creating customised electronic trading technology solutions. In this partnership, they have developed a proprietary trading platform for ADSS that operates 24/7 on the cloud, accessible via web…

In its bid to empower businesses and young innovators in Africa, HabariPay’s Squad has announced the launch of its inaugural hackathon, “Take on Squad Hackathon 1.0”, scheduled for 19th to 20th January, 2024, at the GTCO Training Complex in Abeokuta, Ogun State. The hackathon aims to engage young innovators in Nigerian universities and tertiary institutions, and challenges participating teams to devise innovative solutions to address issues within their immediate communities and broader society. The event seeks to positively impact young Nigerians by offering a platform for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators to develop transformative technological solutions collaboratively. Participants will have exclusive…

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, formerly Twitter, has obtained a money-transmitter licence from the state of Utah, making Utah the 15th US state to grant approval for such a license. The approval, granted on last Friday according to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry, allows X to function similarly to payment platforms like PayPal’s Venmo, enabling the facilitation of money transfers between users. X incorporating payment features into its platform is a move that could potentially diversify its revenue streams beyond digital advertising, especially with the problems the platform’s digital advertising revenue has encountered lately. X’s digital advertising…

Microsoft has unveiled Copilot Pro’s subscription service at $20 per month for consumers and small businesses, with it building on the free AI Copilot introduced for Bing search last year, to bring advanced capabilities to widely used Microsoft applications like Word and Excel. Copilot Pro offers users an AI assistant capable of drafting texts and crunching numbers, and provides access to new tools and AI models, including the powerful GPT-4 Turbo. This aligns with Microsoft’s efforts to tap into the growing market for AI-driven productivity tools and cloud software. Additionally, the company is making its enterprise version more accessible by…