A team of highly-experienced payments industry professionals have launched the enza group (enza), a payments company focused on servicing the growing needs of banks, Fintechs, and MNOs across Africa.

In a statement released to the media, the newly formed company said the African consumer payments landscape remains dominated by cash.

It cites research from global management consulting firm McKinsey which estimates that only 5 to 7% of all payment transactions in Africa are made via electronic or digital channels.

As a result, McKinsey anticipates that between 2020 and 2025, the electronic payments market in Africa will grow by around 150%.

enza has been formed to address this rapidly growing market demand and further accelerate the displacement of cash.

The company is spear-headed by Group CEO Hany Fekry and Group COO Hamish Houston, both of whom were instrumental in the growth of the EMP Group, which serviced more than 180 banks across Africa.

enza focuses on providing native digital payments capabilities to service institutions that want to enable their customers to accept or make electronic payments, a space that was previously dominated by banks, but is increasingly served by MNOs, Fintechs, and government entities.

enza said its platform is a token-based, cloud-native, API-first system that is provided with an open development environment “that expedites integration and improves technical flexibility.”

Fekry said: “We have created enza because so many payments challenges remain unsolved across the African continent. Our focus is on creating a seamless digital fabric between the payments’ channels, schemes, integrations etc. so that enza enables clients to access anything they need, even if we don’t provide the service natively.”

Houston added: “We have had the great advantage of having no legacy technology or processes that we needed to modernise, but rather a blank canvass on which we could architect a modern, third generation payments service built from the first principles to be digital, open, and agile. Agility is not something that can be retrofitted onto legacy systems or operations.”

The company has announced the opening of a new corporate office in Cairo, Egypt by the middle of January.

Its executive board includes Mark Richards (an experienced banking executive formerly of Barclays, Actis private equity, and currently board member of Nova Ljubljanska Bank) joining as Chairman, Naeem Kola (currently the Group CFO at Nasdaq-listed Lesaka Technologies) and Marcello Baricordi (an industry stalwart having previously held senior positions at Visa and First Data International) as non-executive directors.

Richards said, “As a long-term Africaphile, with great enthusiasm for the continued development of the continent, I am very excited to be part of the enza journey, working with colleagues who have a proven track record in building African payments businesses.”