The growing adoption of Fintech is a driving force behind start-ups that attracted over US$2- billion from investors in 2021. It is also forcing traditional banks to change their business models to accommodate and encourage digital banking.

Banks continue to invest in Fintech to offer customers new avenues of digital banking and eliminate the need to visit traditional brick and mortar branches.

Speaking at the 11th Finnovex East Africa Summit, Wole Odeleye, Technology Industry Lead, Financial Services at Microsoft said: “By leveraging partnerships, they can layer Fintech services on top of their own foundations - corporate banking or retail banking services - and deliver them to customers as packaged services. Organisations must identify the new capabilities required, across data and cloud, and then to look at how they can modernise their systems, their structure, and their applications, to ultimately change the way people work and how the organisation delivers value to the consumer base.”

CR2 Market Insight titled: Africa’s Fintech Transformation holds that increased collaboration between stakeholders will benefit Fintech and traditional banks.

“Africa’s banks shouldn’t make this journey alone, however, partnering with Fintech start-ups and technology partners can accelerate their route to success,” reads an excerpt from the report.

The report added that the continent’s established banks must be a part of the innovation transformation occurring in Africa, given their longstanding client networks and more defined regulatory environment.

A survey by banking and technology company ARTTHA noted that 51.6% of financial experts consider that digital payments and remittances are the biggest opportunities for Fintech companies in Africa, while 42.5% say that digital lending is still an open field for Fintech, all which were the preserve of banks.