The pan-African banking group Ecobank has unveiled the 20 winners of its innovation competition Ecobank Fintech Challenge 2017 which aims to identify the most promising technological entrepreneurs on the continent in order to provide them with the support and financial support necessary to build success stories African.
The IroFit startup, founded by Nigerians Omoniyi A. Olawale and Olusola Folorunso, gets away with the Best Innovator Award, along with a $ 10,000 endowment. This, thanks to its ZirooPay mPOS payment solution, an innovation that makes financial payments possible in real time without an Internet connection. The second Prize also went to Nigeria with the startup Kudi Inc which developed the Kudi product. This solution enables payments from chats and uses data analytics to remind customers of invoices due. She comes out with an envelope of $ 7,000. Finally, the third prize along with a $ 5,000 endowment went to Paylater, which was developed by One Finance and which allows clients to obtain loans of up to US $ 1,500 with just one data connection. and a smartphone.
Note that the competition launched in January 2017 was open to start-ups and developers from all 54 countries of the continent. By the end of the application period, more than 850 projects had been registered, both in Africa, Europe, North America and Australia. At the end of the various selections, 20 finalists were selected, and were entitled to an immersion in the Ecobank Innovation Fellowship program, a support and financing program for innovative FinTech start-ups. Among other advantages, these startups have the possibility of benefiting from a partnership opportunity with the Ecobank Group, with funding valued at an estimated US $ 500,000 to all start-ups that meet the investment criteria. from Ecobank, as well as support in the implementation of the project.
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