Mobile Telco Infrastructure Positions Côte d’Ivoire as Key FinTech Hub for Francophone Africa

Home to a string of popular FinTech unicorns and pan-African payment giants like Flutterwave, Interswitch and OPay, Nigeria’s tech startups often steal the headlines.

However, the budding financial technology in Côte d’Ivoire is an indication that Nigeria is not the only country in West Africa driving FinTech growth and development in the region.

Côte d’Ivoire’s capital city, Abidjan, has emerged as a FinTech springboard for Francophone Africa in recent years, offering companies looking to expand in French-speaking countries an ideal alternative to Lagos, Nigeria.

For example, the Abidjan-based payment solution provider Bizao has successfully expanded its footprint into other Francophone West African countries, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Senegal and Gabon.

The firm has also laid down roots in the French-speaking, or at least French-leaning, parts of Central and North Africa, establishing a presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Tunisia.

Read more: African Payments Solution Bizao Raises $8.2M for Regional Expansion

To further its growth, Bizao announced last month that it closed an €8 million ($8.2 million) Series A round that makes the promising FinTech one of Côte d’Ivoire’s most well-funded startups.

With an impressive technology stack that connects mobile money services and bank networks, the Bizao platform enables merchants to process a variety of payments and customers to easily transfer funds across borders via unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) or bank account.

A Region of Mobile-First Payments

The preference for USSD-based solutions is directly tied to the high mobile penetration in the country, which is also a reflection of the continent more broadly.

According to the latest data from the World Bank, there are over 150 mobile subscriptions per 100 people. Additionally, data from the World Bank Findex shows that in 2021, 40% of Ivorian adults had a mobile money account, compared to just 8% having a credit or debit card.

See also: Homegrown Super Apps Shape the Future of Mobile-First African Market

In fact, West Africa in general is a region where mobile telecommunications infrastructure has flourished while bank account ownership remains low.

As Mathias Léopoldie, president of the Ivorian FinTech Julaya, told PYMNTS in an interview last year, West Africa’s strong infrastructure and high mobile phone usage are key to advancing financial inclusion and moving business payments in the region into the digital age.

Read Léopoldie’s interview: West Africa’s Telco Infrastructure Lays The Groundwork For B2B Payments Modernization

He added that whereas paper checks remain prevalent in developed countries like the U.S. despite heavy investments in payments modernization, Francophone West Africa has the potential to leapfrog over legacy solutions into a world of mobile-first payments.

Another West African startup, Senegal-based mobile money provider Wave, last year wrapped up a $200 million Series A funding round at a valuation of $1.7 billion, becoming Francophone’s Africa’s first unicorn.

Related: African FinTech Wave Wraps up $200M Series A Funding Round

As of last September, the FinTech firm, which launched in Cote d’Ivoire in April 2021, had about 5 million active users on its platform and is on a mission to make Africa the world’s first cashless continent.

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