Africa today is home to nearly 1.2 billion people (nearly 3 times the size of the European Union), 435 million mobile internet users (more than 5 times the number of Amazon.com users in the United States of America) and more than 27% of entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa are women (the highest rate in the world). Africa is also the continent with the youngest population in the world (41% of its population is under 15 years old and 19% is between 15 and 24 years old). By 2100, one third of the world’s population will be from sub-Saharan Africa. The continent will then represent 40% of the world’s active population, which is a great opportunity for the digital sector in general and the e-commerce sector in particular.

However, Africa, beyond its great potential, still faces major challenges that undermine its offline and online development. By simple comparison, China has 1.4 billion people (a population roughly equivalent to Africa’s), but it has one government, one language, one currency, one central bank. In contrast, Africa has 1.2 billion people but at least 54 different governments, over 2000 local languages, 42 currencies and 42 central banks. The African continent is the most fragmented in the world, which makes it difficult to reach from an e-commerce perspective. Digital companies are struggling to reach this huge potential. Obtaining online payment through traditional channels, such as credit cards, is still very complicated as more than 90% of the African population remains unbanked.

See also: Tanzania EOR

Today, there is a real opportunity: Sub-Saharan Africa has 132 local mobile payment solutions, North Africa and the Middle East have 20 (although all different from each other). But there is no pan-African payment infrastructure that allows them to be integrated with e-commerce sites to allow merchants to pay with local payment methods (mobile money, cash and local prepaid cards). For economists, this fragmentation is one of the main causes of the high cost of doing business on the continent. Recent calculations estimate that the costs of doing business are, on average, about 30-50% higher in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions.

Faced with this situation, Cedric ATANGANA, an engineer in Industrial and Computer Engineering graduated from Polytech Marseille, and Annicelle KUNGNE, a graduate of a Master’s degree in Business Management and Finance at ESSEC Business School, Marseille, founded the innovative company WeCashUp.com born in Marseille in March 2015. Their goal: to digitally unify the African market.

“The African market is fragmented geographically, we will unify it digitally. Our mission is to help digital companies in general, e-commerce in particular, local or international, to sell their products and services on a pan-African scale and get paid online with the local payment methods available in each country whether the customer is banked or not.”

Innovation for the African continent

WeCashUp is developing an innovative single payment platform solution for the entire continent. This platform aggregates all local payment solutions (Mobile Money, Cash and Bank cards) and offers a single access point to them. Its integration on an e-commerce website allows it to reach more than 1 billion new African customers without moving, with heavy focus on Tanzania.

The We Cash up solution now allows merchants to have a harmonized access to the African market (no need to manage the complexities of each country, Africa will now be accessible as a single country of 1.2 billion potential consumers).

WeCashUp.com also has many advantages for mobile money operators and banks operating in the African market, including access to new local and international merchants who find it painful to integrate all 155 available payment solutions one by one to have access to the whole market.

The startup has won numerous international awards including “President Emmanuel MACRON’s Best Startup Award” at VivaTech in Paris, France in 2018 as well as “Best FinTech Award” at the VISA Everywhere Global Edition Women competition in Paris, France in May 2019.

WeCashUp is definitely a startup to follow as it can surely give a boost to Africa’s financial sector. Several businesses in Tanzania have been adopting the payment platform last year.