This week’s version of Finovate International highlights current fintech headlines from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa.
Circle and Sasai Fintech crew as much as increase adoption of USDC
Digital asset platform Circle introduced a brand new partnership between one among its associates and Sasai Fintech, a enterprise of Cassava Applied sciences. The partnership is designed to spice up adoption of Circle’s USDC stablecoin and broaden internet-native monetary infrastructure throughout Africa.
“Africa’s digital economic system is coming into a brand new period, propelled by entrepreneurship, a mobile-first technology, and the acceleration of intra-regional commerce,” Cassava Applied sciences Founder and Govt Chairman Attempt Masiyiwa stated. “By integrating with the trusted and broadly adopted USDC community, we will drive monetary inclusion and open transformative alternatives for companies and shoppers alike.”
Stablecoin adoption in Africa is accelerating resulting from will increase within the variety of mobile-first shoppers, the expansion of cross-border commerce, and the general growth of the digital economic system. USDC is a fully-reserved, clear fee stablecoin redeemable 1:1 for US {dollars}. The stablecoin has been used to energy programmable funds and monetary functions world wide. This week’s partnership announcement between Circle and Sasai Fintech requires additional exploration into sensible functions for USDC. The 2 firms may also examine ways in which Circle’s full stack platform can decrease prices, friction, and settlement time for Sasai’s enterprise and retail clients.
“Rising markets are on the forefront of stablecoin adoption, and Africa represents a big alternative for internet-native innovation,” Circle Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO Jeremy Allaire stated. “Working with Cassava, we will prolong the advantages of USDC and on-chain infrastructure into high-growth fee corridors to ship always-on world connectivity.”
Sasai Fintech is a pan-African digital fee options supplier. Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, and based in 2021, Sasai Fintech has enabled greater than 250 million wallets and greater than 85,000 POS terminals. A division of Cassava Applied sciences, Sasai Fintech has 20+ enterprise companions and is lively in 30+ cross-border markets.
IFC Companions with Cashi to broaden digital funds infrastructure
Worldwide Finance Company (IFC) has teamed up with digital fee infrastructure firm Cashi. The fintech provides a digital fee platform that permits customers to ship and obtain cash by way of cell phones, point-of-sale units, and SMS-based instruments. Cashi’s platform hyperlinks customers with banks, telecoms, and different monetary establishments in a single interoperable ecosystem that makes on a regular basis transactions simpler in an economic system that also depends closely on money and faces vital obstacles to accessing complete banking providers.
“IFC’s upstream help permits us to adapt our confirmed, crisis-tested platform to the realities of central Africa,” Cashi CEO Tarneem Saeed stated. “This partnership permits us to work carefully with regulators and ecosystem companions, construct belief with native retailers, and ship sensible monetary instruments that folks can use of their every day lives, even in low-connectivity environments.”
Cashi’s platform helps tackle and alleviate digital infrastructure bottlenecks in economies which can be cash-dependent and underbanked. The corporate provides a variety of economic services that allow companies and people to ship, obtain, and spend cash. Cashi provides on the spot settlement, dependable uptime, and devoted help for each retailers and customers. Based in 2022 and headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, Cashi operates as a part of Alsoug.com, the nation’s largest digital classifieds and market.
Monetary infrastructure startup Littlefish raises $9.4 million
A South African fintech infrastructure startup, littlefish, has scored $9.4 million in Collection A funding. The spherical was led by Partech, and featured participation from TLcom Capital, Flourish Ventures, and Proparco. The funding is the newest fundraising for the corporate since its 2021 seed spherical, and the agency expects to make use of the brand new capital to develop its crew, advance product improvement, and enter new markets resembling Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
“This increase is a validation of our perception that one of the simplest ways to serve Africa’s small companies is to work with the establishments they already belief, not round them,” Brandon Roberts, Co-Founder and CEO of littlefish, stated. “We’ve confirmed the mannequin in South Africa, and this capital offers us the runway to deepen these relationships and convey what we’ve constructed to hundreds of thousands extra retailers throughout the continent. The little guys deserve world-class monetary infrastructure, too, and we’re constructing it.”
Littlefish provides a service provider working system that empowers banks to ship fintech services to small companies by integrating funds, POS software program, CRMs, APIs, and extra right into a unified layer. This permits banks and different monetary establishments to supply trendy, digital providers to retailers with out disrupting their current relationships with clients. Littlefish helps banks ship extra providers to their enterprise clients extra effectively, and offers small companies the chance to steadily modernize and digitize their operations.
Littlefish counts establishments resembling Customary Financial institution, First Nationwide Financial institution, and Absa amongst its purchasers. The corporate was co-founded in 2021 by Roberts and Miod Davith Kahwa.
Right here is our have a look at fintech innovation world wide.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Mexico-based digital commerce platform, Clip, launched Faucet to Pay performance on the iPhone.
Mastercard executed a collection of reside, end-to-end agentic fee transactions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cross-border funds expertise firm Reap obtained a Cash Transmitter Registry in Mexico.
Asia-Pacific
Singapore-based fintech Fingular unveiled Shariah-first digital financing model in Malaysia, Tazee.
Enterprise on-chain settlement infrastructure firm Capital Layer cast a distribution partnership with Taiwan-based home system integrator Stark Know-how Inc.
Vienamese police dismantle fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme that value buyers billions of {dollars}.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Working system for African banks and retailers, Littlefish, raised $9.5 million in Collection A funding.
Western Union partnered with Sasai Fintech to convey digital remittance entry to South African shoppers.
African monetary ecosystem platform Moniepoint acquired cloud-based restaurant administration platform Orda Africa.
Central and Japanese Europe
Georgia-based TBC Financial institution partnered with GDS Hyperlink to energy credit score decisioning for retail lending.
German fintech Solaris introduced plans to change into an “AI-native financial institution,” minimize 20% of its workforce.
PA Turkey appeared on the energy of fintech funding in Turkey in 2025.
Center East and Northern Africa
Saudi Arabia’s central financial institution issued its first Main Fee Establishment license for open banking providers to Lean Applied sciences.
Vault22 introduced plans to launch its Islamic finance platform Hafiq within the UAE by the center of 2026.
Banque Misr inked a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft Egypt to launch an open fintech innovation program for the Egyptian market.
Central and Southern Asia
Sri Lanka-based industrial financial institution Hatton Nationwide Financial institution enabled its debit playing cards to be added to Google Pockets.
Indian worker well being and insurance coverage platform Plum raised $20.6 million in Collection B funding.
Revolut introduced plans to spice up its India-based workforce by 5,500 by the top of 2026.
Photograph by Adrien Olichon
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