Pan African banking group Ecobank announced on Friday the winners of the 2018 Ecobank Fintech Challenge. As previously reported, the Challenge’s contestants must be one of the following categories:
Remittances- Digital Sales/Marketing
- Offline mobile to mobile payments
- Digital Onboarding/ Account Opening/ KYC
- SME Intra-Africa Trade Platform
- Multi-Channel Corporate Payments/ Collections Ecosystems
According to Ecobank, Nala, from Tanzania, was named the overall winner of the competition. Virtual Identity from South Africa and Wallet.ng from Nigeria were the first and second runners-up. They won cash prizes worth US$10,0000, $7,000 and US$5,000. Speaking about the winners, Ade Ayeyemi, Ecobank Group CEO, stated:
“We are proud of the impressive start-ups that made it to our 2018 final. They are shining examples of the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity that will propel our continent’s global competitiveness in the commercial services markets, and I sincerely expect some, if not all, of them to be the business titans of tomorrow.”
This year’s Fintech Challenge was keenly contested with applications from more than 412 fintech entrepreneurs from across Africa, Europe, North America and Asia.
