The Milken Institute and the Motsepe Foundation have announced the 10 teams advancing to the Semifinalist Round of the Milken-Motsepe Prize in FinTech, with each team receiving $100,000 in funding.
Among the semifinalists are three Kenya-based fintech startups. They include: AZA Finance, Chumz, and Paycloud by Lipa Later.
Responding to a global call for applications, the Milken-Motsepe Prize in FinTech prize supports innovative solutions to expand access to tools necessary for financial inclusion across emerging and frontier markets.
The Semifinalists will participate in an Innovation Showcase at the Milken Institute’s Middle East and Africa Summit, scheduled for December 5-6, 2024, in Abu Dhabi, UAE. During the event, the 10 teams will pitch their innovations to a panel of expert judges and investors, and three teams will be selected to move on to the final round of the prize. The judges will evaluate the pitches based on the teams’ ability to deliver solutions that improve financial inclusion for under-resourced groups in emerging and frontier markets.
The prize will ultimately award $2 million in total prizes, including a $1 million Grand Prize. Following the December showcase, the Grand Prize will be awarded at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles, in May 2024.
“By supporting these pioneering teams, we aim to foster financial inclusion and empower entrepreneurs who drive economic growth and opportunities in their communities,” said Emily Musil, senior director, Milken Institute. “Our prizes help identify, support, and celebrate talent to ignite the entrepreneurial spirit and empower visionaries to turn their ideas for a better future into reality.”
These teams operate in nearly 30 countries across three continents, and their innovations hold the potential for significant breakthroughs in financial inclusion for underserved communities on a global scale. Over the next four months, the Semifinalist teams will test and scale their solutions, which will be evaluated for impact, scalability, and sustainability.
The 10 Semifinalists are as below:
AZA Finance, Kenya (Team lead: Caroline Shiku Njathi). AZA Finance is a B2B fintech company offering businesses low-cost, efficient, and secure financial services, including payments, currency exchange, and treasury, across all major currencies.
Chapa, Ethiopia (Team lead: Nael Teklehaimanot). Chapa is an online payment gateway company with a developer-friendly API that simplifies integrating payment processing into websites and applications for Ethiopian businesses.
Chumz, Kenya (Team lead: Sam Njuguna). Chumz is a gamified savings product that leverages behavioral psychology to help individuals save at low cost.
Farmpawa, Uganda (Team lead: Moses Eteku). Farmpawa is a crowd farming platform that connects investors with real farming assets, empowering farmers and driving sustainable agricultural growth.
Flow Global, UK (Team lead: Michael Rothe). Flow Global is a liquidity engine that helps retail merchants grow in the digital economy by addressing all of their working capital needs.
Paycloud by Lipa Later, Kenya (Team lead: Eric Muli). Paycloud is a digital banking platform that addresses late payments in Africa by offering seamless payment processing, payment splitting, automated invoicing, and financial tools.
Nyla Bank, Ghana (Team lead: Mubarak Sumaila). Nyla Bank is building Africa’s first digital Islamic bank with a goal of empowering 1 billion people with innovative, Shariah-compliant products and services that align with ethical principles.
Oze, Ghana (Team lead: Meghan McCormick). Oze is a digital lending platform that bridges Africa’s credit gap by providing banks with a small and medium-sized enterprise- (SME) focused app that digitizes financial data, enabling risk assessment and lending to small businesses.
Trade Lenda, Nigeria (Team lead: Adeshina Adewumi). Trade Lenda is a banking platform tailored to SMEs, where loans can be accessed within one to six hours, and micro-savings can be achieved for business goals.
Verto, UK (Team lead: Rachel Coombs). Verto is a business-to-business cross-border payments platform for businesses in emerging markets, powered by a unified network that eliminates intermediary fees, handles 49 currencies, and settles transactions faster.
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank focused on accelerating measurable progress on the path to a meaningful life. With a focus on financial, physical, mental, and environmental health, we bring together the best ideas and innovative resourcing to develop blueprints for tackling some of our most critical global issues through the lens of what’s pressing now and what’s coming next.
The Motsepe Foundation was founded in 1999 by Dr. Patrice Motsepe and his wife, Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe. The goal of the Motsepe Foundation is to contribute towards eradicating poverty and to sustainably improve the living conditions and standards of living of poor, unemployed, and marginalized people in South Africa, Africa, and the world. In January 2013, Dr. Patrice Motsepe and Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe joined the Giving Pledge, which was started by Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates. Dr. Patrice Motsepe and his wife committed to give half of their wealth to the poor and for philanthropic purposes during their lifetime and beyond.
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