Lost amid cryptocurrency’s recent crash has been another significant moment for financial tech (fintech) markets — an African digital payments company acquired a US firm to accelerate its growth strategy. The rare move is indicative of how African start-ups could soon become global giants within the fintech industry.
On June 6,MFS Africa, the continent’s largest facilitator of digital payments, whose network integrates more than 320 million mobile money accounts across at least 35 African countries, purchased Oklahoma-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) in a. GTP is the biggest processor of prepaid cards in Africa, handling transactions from more than 80 of the continent’s leading banks, as well as Visa, Mastercard and other international financial institutions. MFS Africa reportedly acquired GTP mostly to enable more of Africa’s 1.4 billion people to access services on global platforms such as Amazon and Netflix, which generally don’t accept digital payments from large portions of the continent.