In what has been touted as an indigenous African love story between two fintechs, Zeepay Ghana, the leading African Challenger Fintech, has acquired a majority stake in one of Zambia’s fastest growing fintechs, Mangwee Mobile Money.
Zeepay Ghana, which already has operations in 20 African countries, acquired a 51 percent stake in Mangwee Mobile Money in a private placement deal, which makes Zeepay the majority shareholder of Mangwee.
Mangwee has been in operations since 2018, and was initially set up to operate as an alternative wallet targeting university students in Zambia with the aim of assisting to drive the cost of mobile money services downward.
Zeepay on the other hand is has a 30 day active operations in 10 out of the 20 African countries in which it is operational, and terminates remittances in over 90 countries globally.
The company specializes in paying remittances directly into mobile money wallets across Africa and is regulated by both Bank of Ghana as an electronic money issuer (EMI), and in the UK as a Money Transfer Operator, by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
“The merger is the first of its kind – that two indigenous African fintech companies in mobile money operations have come together to grow. It represents a wind of change ongoing on the African continent,” a statement from Zeepay said.
According the statement, Zeepay’s financial advisor, Verdant Capital, acted as its Merger and Acquisition advisor on the deal.
The company, however, did not say how much it paid for the majority stake in Mangwee.
The Managing Director of Zeepay, Andrew Takyi-Appiah, in an interview mentioned that “In 2020 we processed 2.4million transactions valued at $400million across 10 markets.”
He had earlier told TechGh24 in an exclusive interview that in 2020, Zeepay exceeded its transaction volumes target by over 110% on the back of the boost in the use of digital finance due the Covid-19.
Andrew Takyi-Appiah said the acquisition of Mangwee is strategic and opens up the Southern African corridor for Zeepay, adding that “This will give Zeepay access to Mozambique, Malawi, Angola and Namibia amongst others in our efforts to capture Africa’s $70billion remittance market and opportunity to deploy our award winning products.”
This confirms what the MD told TechGh24 in an earlier interview about Zeepay gunning for global dominance and looking at Africa and beyond.
Chairman of Zeepay, Paa Kwasi Yankey confirmed that position, saying that the move to invest in Mangwee is part of Zeepay’s global strategy to expand its footprint across Africa, in an effort to better serve its global clients and reduce the cost of remittance into Africa.
On his part, Co-founder of Mangwee, said Aston Njovu, said “Acquisition of Mangwee by Zeepay marks the opening of Southern Africa to the world of conveniently affordable IMT services.”
His partner, Bwalya Kampamba also said the partnership with Zeepay is good for Africa and Zambia, explaining that “Through this we will be able to leverage their award-winning mobile money products such as Remit Insurance, Payments, and Visa-direct to deepen financial inclusion and open up the markets.”
About Zeepay
Zeepay is the fastest growing mobile financial services company across Africa with operations in Ghana and United Kingdom and terminating to 20 countries across Africa with termination agreements in over 90 jurisdictions globally. We specialize in remittance termination into mobile wallets and are completely network and partner agnostic. We are a wholly owned Ghanaian company and regulated in the UK by Financial Conduct Authority-FCA #592538 and in Ghana by Bank of Ghana- PSD/ZGL/20/03 under the Payment Systems and Services Act, 2019 (Act 987). Zeepay supports Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3 and is considered a Financial Inclusion Company positioned to improve last mile access. Zeepay recently commission its multi-million dollar state-of-the-art office premises, dubbed The Zeepay Campus, at Cantonments in Accra, Ghana. Visit myzeepay.com for more information.
About Mangwee
Mangwee is a mobile money and remittance platform aimed at increasing the rate of financial inclusion, especially in rural areas, and propelling Zambia and Africa to a cash-light economy. We do this through the provision of an easy, secure and affordable payment platform. Mangwee began operations in 2018 with the aim of transforming the entire cross-section of education and finance across the African continent beginning with Zambia.
