New African Projects – Protecting Banks and Telecoms in East Africa; Access to Affordable Banking in French-speaking West Africa; SMEs Benefit in Mauritius

Kenyan startup Transcode has developed fraud management software for banks and telecoms, and is seeking funding to scale it across the continent. Formed in 2018, Transcode released its core software (iGuard) in 2020. iGuard is a fraud and money laundering detection engine based on artificial intelligence (AI) to prevent and detect complex fraud, in real-time, at banks and telecos.

The Ivorian-based Djamo is a financial super app that aims to democratise access to quality and affordable banking to millions of Africans living across the Francophone Africa region and has been accepted into the Silicon Valley-based accelerator Y Combinator. The startup will receive US$125,000 in seed funding as well as further investment opportunities at a March demo day. Djamo launched its app and Visa card in November 2020, six months after closing a US$350,000 pre-seed investment from early-stage investors. Today, it has around 90,000 registered users and processes over 50,000 transactions monthly. Y Combinator’s backing validates the fintech startup’s premise that financial services distribution across the Francophone Africa region is fundamentally changing with the advance of Internet and smartphone penetration, and is starting to switch towards apps.

Mauritius Commercial Bank’s (MCB) has introduced a Backbase-built SME banking platform and new mobile app, JuicePro. Using the platform, MCB completely remodelled its offering to SME users and has put a foundation in place to advance digital innovation across all lines of business. The mobile platform for SMEs will cater to growing customer demand, provide a smoother and bespoke banking experience, and then be replicated across all business lines using the Backbase Omni-channel banking platform.