Colombian Fintech Minka, Expands Into Eastern And Southern Africa
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Colombia’s real-time payment platform Minka, has launched operations in Eastern and Southern Africa.
On Tuesday, the company announced plans to set up shop in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. It also plans to expand to Mozambique, Zambia, and Malawi in Southern Africa.
Commenting on Minka’s expansion to Eastern and Southern Africa, the company’s CEO Domagoj Rozic said,
“Our expansion into Africa is a testament to our continued mission to build more efficient payments infrastructure across the Global South. Low levels of financial inclusion, a heavy reliance on cash, and non-interoperable legacy payment systems are just a few of the issues our team in Latin America has successfully overcome and we believe it is our duty to continue creating solutions that benefit society.”
Minka is a cloud-based programmable solution that can be customized by its partners to fit within a variety of regulatory frameworks. The company builds payment networks that allow people to send money between participating banks and other financial institutions.
Founded in Bogota, Colombia, in 2016, the fintech raised $24M in 2022 in a Series A funding round which saw participation from Tiger Global Management, Kaszec Ventures, and the FinTech Collective.
The company noted that its initial focus on Eastern and Southern Africa will be implementing its highly successful model in Latin America, where it bridges the gaps between banks, financial institutions, central banks, fintechs, and clearing houses online through shared and connected ledgers. Notably, it is banking on the similarities in demographics between its home market and the African continent, as well as the latter’s rapidly growing and highly competitive fintech space.
It is however worth noting that Minka’s arrival in East Africa follows a trend of Latin American fintech companies expanding into Africa. Recall that in 2022, EBANX launched in 11 African countries. Two years earlier, Uruguay’s dLocal launched in West Africa and Kenya.
Source: The Kenyan Wall Street
