By: Darlington Onyeagoro
Nigeria’s payment systems have garnered attention for their surprising advancement, outpacing many European and Western counterparts. Despite this progress, Nigeria faces a significant challenge: payment failures. With the surge in digital payments adoption, exacerbated by a recent cash shortage, Nigeria’s current payment infrastructure needs to work on facilitating seamless inter-bank and inter-platform transactions. This issue isn’t unique to Nigeria but extends across the African continent.
Across Africa, payment systems are marked by fragmentation, inefficiency, and high costs, hindering intra-African trade and leveraging each member state’s comparative advantages. To address these challenges, various fintech companies and initiatives like the Pan-African Payment System (PAPS) are actively working towards enhancing connectivity and interoperability among banks, mobile wallets, and multiple payment channels.
However, a transformative solution lies in the creation of a pan-African wallet, akin to China’s WeChat or Alipay, aimed at serving the payment and commerce needs of over one billion people in Africa. This ambitious endeavor seeks to make payments seamless, affordable, and efficient across the continent by fostering interoperability among various payment channels and financial institutions.
Aladdin stands at the forefront of this transformative vision in Africa, offering comprehensive payment and trade solutions for both individuals and businesses. Their innovative product, “Payconnect,” serves as a multi-currency P2P payment marketplace facilitating global remittance and cross-border payments without physically moving funds across borders. Additionally, Aladdin collaborates with Pan-African and local banks to provide regulatory-compliant onboarding and local bank accounts, simplifying collections and offering global infrastructure for cross-border payments and remittances.
Aladdin distinguishes itself as the first fintech in Africa to provide full-service payment and trade solutions across the continent. Their platform transcends mere payment infrastructure by facilitating P2P and B2B connections through a multi-currency, multilingual marketplace and social community. Every user, whether individual or business, has a unique profile and customizable page, enabling seamless connections for payments or trade.
Noteworthy Progress and Milestones:
- Present Valuation: $9 Million.
- Remarkable Metrics: 250,000 downloads, with over 160,000 users, facilitating 40,000+ loans and processing transactions totaling $100 million.
- Substantial Revenue: Generating over $450,000 in revenue.
- Strong Investor Backing: Attracted investments from eight institutional investors, including Plug & Play, Hatcher, LoftyInc, and Expert Dojo, all at a $9 million valuation.
- Ongoing Investment: Already secured $850,000 of the targeted $1.2 million for this funding round.
- Strategic Partnerships: Successfully established ten strategic partnerships.
- Experienced Leadership: Co-founder previously served as a founding director of a $2 billion unicorn, OPay, and is the CEO of OKash, which has over 1 million users and has disbursed over $120 million.
- Skilled Team: The team collectively possesses 48 years of experience in financial services, e-commerce, and technology.
- Vast Market Opportunity: Addressing a $5 billion Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM), with over 60% of African adults being self-employed.
Some of Aladdin’s awards and achievements include
- Nira Awards 2023: Best E-Payment Website/Portal
- Aladdin was the first fintech in Africa to provide full-service Payment and Trade solutions to both individuals and businesses across Africa.
In summary, while Nigeria’s payment system showcases advancements, significant challenges and opportunities for improvement persist across Africa. Initiatives like Aladdin, with their pan-African wallet vision, hold immense potential to transform the payment landscape, driving economic growth and fostering greater financial inclusion within the continent.
Published By: Aize Perez
