Fingo
There are hundreds of millions of youth excluded from the global financial system in Africa.
Specifically, banking for young Africans is painful and broken:
2-7 days to open an account
Sending money is expensive: average 9.6% transaction fees across East Africa
Bank apps are clunky, with low uptake
Existing Digital banking is predominantly USSD/text based
A Pan African Neobank designed for young Africans, by young Africans:
In 240 seconds, any young person will be able to access a full suite of financial services including personal, business, investment and savings accounts
With Fingo, transaction fees are 90% cheaper
Intuitive mobile application designed around social interaction, with the ability to set user names, send GIFs and request money
Fingo serves African youth. Providing them with the opportunity to generate wealth for the first time.
By 2050, a quarter of the world’s people will be African and half of the world’s youth will be in Africa.
Today, Africa, has the youngest population in the world, with 70% of sub-Saharan Africa under the age of 30.
Young African families earn around $3000 USD per year and pay up to 10% of this in fees. They are enrolled in a mix of formal and informal employment, and they are inherently entrepreneurial. Fingo will immediately reduces income lost on transaction fees and provides a safe heaven to store income for young people, backed by the largest footprint bank in Africa. We provide financial education encouraging young people to save and invest, ensuring they have money for a rainy day tomorrow and they build their wealth over their lifetime.
Fingo is built by young Africans for young Africans. Our team of 15 engineers, designers and creatives are based in Nairobi with our target users.
We spent 2 years piloting our application with 1000 customers in Beta, pending regulation from the central bank of Kenya. As such, we hyper understand the core needs of our target population - young professionals, students and first time account openers in Kenya.
We meet our users in person every week and get instant feedback over our application.
Finally, after launching in May with the President Ruto of Kenya we have scaled to 20,000 users already and we are carefully collecting their feedback in an open and collaborative way.
We live in and we are the community we serve.
- Make it easier and more affordable for individuals and MSMEs to make investments and transfer payments, across geographies and across different types of platforms
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model that is rolled out in one or more communities
20,000 with a waitlist of 100,000
We hope solve will help us refine our theory of change as we scale across the African continent
- Human Capital (e.g. sourcing talent, board development)
- Monitoring & Evaluation (e.g. collecting/using data, measuring impact)
We are the first digital only bank in Kenya, we offer 5 minute onboarding and we have partnered with Ecobank to scale across 35 countries in Africa.
Open bank accounts for 5m young people and generate wealth for them.
- 5. Gender Equality
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 10. Reduced Inequalities
- Accounts opened
- Transaction volume
- Savings from cheaper fees
- Wealth generated (savings interest and investments)
By providing young people with affordable banking services and value-add financial products they will be able to generate wealth and find meaningful wealth over their life times, tackling generational inequality.
- Core banking
- Fingo Atlas api architecture
- Best-in-class mobile android and ios application
- AI powered KYC and transaction monitoring
- A new business model or process that relies on technology to be successful
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Behavioral Technology
- Big Data
- Blockchain
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
D&I is embedded in everything we do. We are a team that is 90% Black and African, with women in the most senior roles in our company
Fingo makes money from transaction fees - we make $1 USD per month on an average user transacting $250 USD per month. Fees on the Fingo app are 90% cheaper than mobile money and banking alternatives - users can also send money peer to peer for free.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
Over time we plan to scale our ARPU by adding additional value add financial products including interest earning savings, investments and remittance.
We have raised $4m usd in funding from world class investors including y combinator, HOF VC, Goodwater capital, Hustle Fund and leading fintech unicorn founders (monzo, sumup, twitch).
