Fintech innovations on the rise in DR Congo’s nascent startup landscape

Access to basic financial services is quite limited in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is not left out.

Records have it that, just 14% of the population possess an actual bank account and only 25% possess an account with either banking or any other financial institution.

The digital finance upheaval that’s played out in the rest of Africa over the past decennary, thus cannot succeed immediately ample for people in the central African nation, primarily given it has a 47% mobile phone penetration probability, with the figure likely to evolve by a greater distance.

Varied startups have emerged over the previous  (5) years, through which fintech inventions, have generated financial services closer to where people reside and labor. 

One such is Flash International, the largest fintech and payments aggregator in the country.

Flash regulates a system of representatives that permits people to do their banking on its mobile setting (FlashApp), establishing financial services—including remittance, payments, and other value-added services—within easy range.

Presently, the startup has about 3,500 representatives and 90 branches, through which it satisfies additionally than 2 million prospects. Instead of inaugurating personal accounts with numerous banks or mobile money operators, Flash provides its users a card with which they can receive all expenditures.

Flash, since its launch,  has confirmed stellar expansion and is presently incorporated with different banks, mobile money, and telecom operators. It alleges to process approximately 1 million deals estimated at over $50 million per month via its payment actions and also enables more than 40,000 satellite TV subscription transactions, one of its value-added creations.

As asserted by the CEO, the purpose was to erect the prime Congolese fintech that would aggregate as multiple financial and value-added services as probable.

Circumventing fintech challenges in DRC

D R Congo as a country, the road, and internet infrastructure is below par, representatives are extremely useful to the extending rural residents and reducing deployment fees for providers.

For clients, representative structures reduce transiting duration and safety risks as they historically had to fix one of the only 500 bank branches available in the country—which ironically is, Africa’s second-largest country by land area and the fourth most populous.

“Most deals are achieved over the counter in DRC as there’s still an incredibly poor penetration in terms of smartphones and internet access is not affordable. Also, the prevalent habit of the population is mainly to visit an agent for a transaction or service,”

A huge capital setback for access in the financial actions maintains the sovereignty of big banks like Ecobank and UBA as well as network operators (such as Vodacom Congo, Orange RDC, and Bharti Airtel who collectively control 35-40 million subscribers).

Fintech startups daring to collaborate with banks and telcos have had to deal with skepticism and phobia from the industry colossi. It took Faysal almost a year and a half to get its first mobile money integration license in 2020 after the startup was slighted by banks and local mobile network operators for co-operations.