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Fintech, abbreviation for Financial Technology is the automation and innovation that focuses on competing and improving the traditional financial delivery methods. This is an industry where banking, borrowing, investing, trading and cryptocurrency is conducted through the use of smartphones. This technology has achieved the goal of making the general public access financial services with much ease.

Financial Technology in Kenya

For decades, financial institutions such as insurers and banks have constituently employed one static business model that is highly profitable to them. They have however today found themselves on all sides confronted by innovators intending to test their businesses. From mobile payments, crowdfunding, bitcoin, robotic process automation -it is clear the diversity is endless for the fintech innovators.

In Kenya, Financial Technology is fast expanding and has become more popular, disrupting the traditional financial methods in a big way. This innovation has promoted accessibility of financial services to the general Kenyan population who use it for mobile banking, pay bills, invest and even buy insurance. This has greatly been enhanced by the fact that you do not need to leave your house or have a bank account to make these transactions.

4 Top Fintech Companies in Kenya

 1. Mpesa

Mpesa enables registered users access financial services through the use of mobile phone. It is Africa’s largest financing company with a presence in Africa, India and Southeastern Europe, making financial services available to the unbanked population and in the process reducing financial related crimes in the society. Users can receive, deposit and withdrawal their cash as well as make payments. It also offers an overdraft facility best known as Fuliza to its customers.

Mpesa has operational markets in Kenya, Tanzania, DRC, Egypt, Lesotho, Mozambique and Ghana, over 37 million active subscribers and around 400,000 registered agents as of 2019.

  2. Pesapal

This is a top Kenyan fintech company offering a platform for businesses to send and receive payments from all over the world. It however not limited to only businesses as individuals can as well access the platform when paying for services and buying goods at local stores.

They also sell point-of-sale business solution to the local stores. This is aimed at helping the stores in simplifying how they handle their revenue by making electronic and digital form of payments possible. Report generation and account reconciliation has also been made simple by the point-of-sale system.

3. Eastpesa

This is a mobile money platform that allows sending and receiving of cash by any number in East Africa. Registered users are able to send and make instant withdrawals. Eastpesa has a feature designed at allowing its users schedule payments. Individuals are able to set when they want to make their payments, such as daily, weekly or even monthly automatically. To make it safe, the feature sends a notification to the user to confirm or cancel the transaction.

Eastpesa also allows users to purchase airtime in Kenya as well as offer small business with tailor-made payment solutions.

4. Bitpesa

Bitpesa is one of the best cryptocurrency trading platforms in Kenya. It is also one of the first of its kind to be introduced, came at a time when majority of Kenyan cryptocurrency traders were facing real challenges and had to use international platforms. The company mainly deals with large transactions of crypto-asset, offering competitive pricing to wholesale traders not only in Kenya but all over Africa.

Bitpesa is well known for its excellent facilitation of fast and affordable transactions across its area of operation through the use of blockchain settlement. Normally, transaction settlement takes a maximum of two hours a practice that prevents individuals from incurring losses in volatility.

It is clear that this more than just disruption. How it plays out remains to be seen. Fintech technology will without doubt be of benefit to the consumers, its innovators forcing the traditional financial service providers to change or even out of business. Some of the incumbents have however realized that working with the fintech innovators will help them face the industry with a new point of view, understand their strategic advantage better as well as externalize their research and growth aspects. This helps these businesses meet their client’s needs, avoiding the risk of losing the customers to another business offering full-service financial services.

Almost all of us strive to improve how we save and budget our money. This has not gone without being noticed by the tech world who have in turn developed a constant stream of personal finance software and tools to help. This can be used to help create budgets, track spending and even plan for the future expenses. Most software differs by the software code, development transparency, feature support, import methods, mobile application features, storage practices and privacy. We have sampled through a number of budget mobile apps and chosen those that are most helpful when it come to budget and personal finance.

If what you are looking for is an app that will subscribe you to a certain routine or an app that simply alerts you when you are running low on finance, the answer is right here. The list consists of free budget apps and are all available on Android and iOS devices.

Mint has for some time been the best budgeting tool. The app is able to categorize transactions and updates automatically giving you a real-time spending picture. You can also add categories, split your transactions, track your bills as well as set budgets to alert you when you are spending more than your maximum threshold. All these combined with the ability to provide your credit score and monitor credit score makes mint the number budgeting app.

PocketGuard with this app you are able to sync your credit cards, loans, bank accounts, savings and investment accounts. It basically allows you to have all your personal finance accounts organized in one place. Pocketguard automatically updates based on your earning and spending patterns, tracking your income, recurring expenses and bills. It also helps you create spending limits, provide you with insights in to your spending by offering categorized transactions. The app also has a feature designed to provide with an overview of the accounts you could be under paying without having to leave the app.

YNAB is for users who are committed. It is designed to help move out of the life of debts as well as break from the salary to salary cycle. It has A Debt Paydown feature which offers tools and training to help the user break from the debt for good. Users must come up with a plan for every earned coin. You are required to provide a monthly financial investment of 11.99 USD or 84 USD a year after a free trial period of 34 days. Once the above pay has been made, you will be able to benefit from the apps numerous features. It allows you to connect all your personal financial accounts in a single place, contribute to your savings and also customize your spending categories. It offers you real-time access to resources such as the budgeting advice, free workshops and user guide.  

EveryDollar is personal finance app designed to help you track your spending as well as plan your purchases. This app is made for the zero-based personal finance plan, which is plan where your expenses is equal to your earnings. It has a free version where you can create every transaction to be able to account for your budget. For a smooth experience, you can upgrade to the EveryDollar Plus which allows you to link your bank account with expenses. This is however billed 129.99 USD annually.

 Clarity Money is a detailed budgeting and savings app which allows users to connect their bank accounts from numerous institutions, plan expenses, categorize their spending and track their spending. It also has other features such as monitoring credit score and subscription canceling. This helps provide a more detailed financial impression which is much better than just transactions.

Owning or starting your own business is among the proven ways of creating life long freedom and wealth.
However, this route is filled with lots of uncertainties.

Most people find it difficult to start their own business right from scratch due to a variety of factors such as lack of funding, support from the relevant authorities, connections and some just doubt their business ideas hence stay waiting for big ideas like Mpesa, Equity bank or Alibaba.

What they do not know is, most of the successful entrepreneurs have humble beginnings. From selling charcoal in the neighbourhood, offering cleaning services to raising chicken to raise capital to fund their dream ideas. May be, they’d have wished to buy already established business which would start earning them income right from the word go. Taking an already established business would have made their journey way easier, fast and less risky when compared to starting from scratch. May be all they’d have to do is make this business great and in return give them big returns, sometimes twice, three times or even ten times the size of capital. But they did not have that money.

In the rest past, we have seen people start from scratch and build multimillion dollar investments. This is a sure way to show that starting at zero, we all have equal chances of succeeding in our new businesses provided we taking the right path and remain focused towards the realisation of our goals.

Here are steps to follow when starting your own business

1. Choose the type of business you want

Identify the type of business you want to venture in. Go for the simple business models that have little competition and require minimal investment such as construction, plumbing or even professional services. But the best one to venture in is that one which speaks both to your interest and experience.
This however is not a must as you may not need to have experience in that industry and opt to be trained. In the event you do not want to be involved in the daily management operations of the business, you can decide to hire or employ an experienced person to do it on your behalf. You may as well look for someone who is doing the same kind of job in a different company and incentivize them to having to leave employment for a chance to invest in your new company.

2. Look for motivated sellers

It is always crucial to look for people are ready and motivated to work. This should not be difficult for you as there’s many people who are desperate to have a job or people who are just bored and ready for a change. Finding these people can be done through different ways such as asking friends to help get them, trusted employment agencies or even using the same way one would use to get clients for example marketing through social media and networking.

3. Do your calculations

Have a rough estimate of the amount you expect to earn and make sure the money to come in is enough to cover your cost of financing. In addition to being profitable, check whether your business has chances of growing over time. Remember you can always increase your revenue by just improving operations or marketing.

4. Find and connect well with your customers

While showing smart plans for your new business is essential, your pitch ought to be more than that. Always remember that your business is your baby meaning you are supposed to care about it. Work hard to build a reputable brand out of it.

Always keep your focus and be the best steward of your new business, then match towards building your own legacy. Learn and always be eager to make improvements to your business.

After taking all the above steps, your business is up and running. To remain successful, learn to build a strong connection both with your clients and employees, if any. Define your role as well as their duties and establish key performance indicator (KPIs) for all of you.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton