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According to a report compiled by Kasi 82% of Africans have never owned cryptocurrency, and over 49% of African adults distrust the very idea of digital money. This development is far from unexpected due to cryptocurrency awareness and ownership maintaining an unremarkable status quo until 2020 when things skyrocketed. Today, Africa is not left behind in the digital payment ecosystem but how close is she to financial inclusion?

In an insightful piece on empowering African businesses with crypto payment gateways, the CEO of Ivory Pay, Oluwatobi Ajayi states that the high cost of transactions, restricted access to financial services, and currency volatility are three major obstacles in seamless payment processing in Africa's thriving economy of 1.3 billion people.

While these problems highlight the need for crypto payment integration, Africa's financial landscape must eliminate currency instability, poor financial services, and hyperinflation as seen in Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and South Sudan; to further amplify the power of any revolutionary payment system that will hit her financial scene.

Unfortunately, crypto necessity is still nearly impossible to explain to the average Gen X and some Millenials on the continent. Given Africa's transgenerational caution a Swahili proverb that says "If you do not open the door, you will find the wall," conveys a simple solution to the problem of unbanked and underbanked African businesses.

Two words: fintech innovations. Let's quickly break down this concept.

What is Fintech?

A portmanteau of the words “finance” and “technology”, fintech covers the strategic utilization to provide solutions to underlying problems faced by traditional financial institutions or services. For crypto newbies, fintechs are like the cool kids of financial industries. Fintech enterprises boost their technology and offerings by harnessing the power of technological advancements, data analysis, and the latest big thing in tech Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Top 10 Indigenous Fintech Solutions in Africa

1. Opay

2. Palmpay

3. Flutter save

4. PiggyVest

5. Yoco

6. Paystack

7. Cowrywise

8. MFS Africa Limited

9. Fawry

10. Chipper Cash

What Role Does Fintech Innovations Play in Africa's Crypto Acceleration?

Using fintech innovations that can multitask as crypto payment gateways, can unlock the future of finance and speed up cryptocurrency adoption. Imagine an economic landscape cleared of current issues in insurance, payments, retail lending, small-scale lending, and lastly, finance operation and infrastructure.

The possibilities are endless.

What's even more interesting is that the ethos of cryptocurrency provides a one-size-fits-all solution to these issues and the presence of decentralized currencies helps fintechs bypass the limitations of traditional financial systems.

A report by McKinsey & Company puts cryptocurrency growth between 2020-2025 at an estimated 50% with every 10% growth African fintech companies achieve. The numbers for this projection at $230 billion by 2025.

So what is the connection between fintechs and cryptocurrency? We'll highlight two convergence points:

Wealth Management

Africa's middle class has always been more inclined to other investment options and it's not hard to guess why. To many, the idea of stock, bonds or ETF ownership has always vague, complicated affair. But with the consistent decline of native currencies and smartphones and internet accessibility, a lot of people in the continent now have these modern investment alternatives at their fingertips.

Fintech applications today are now more than everyone's go-to option for fast, cross-country transactions, they serve as gateways for speculative trading as well.

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Remittance

The average African who has outsourced international transactions to foreign solutions such as MoneyGram of Western can attest to how challenging simple procedures such as sending and receiving payments can be using these solutions. In most cases, charges for small transactions either cost an arm or are not available for stable use.

This is because the only system to facilitate these transactions is traditional banks. The paper trail might as well be the Congo River! Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, possesses minimal infrastructure. Hence, the absence of transactional complexities. All users simply need to do is push a few buttons on their screen.

Today, we see fintechs like Chipper Cash providing Bitcoin support to bridge CeFi and DeFi while big shot Binance is joining the train with the advent of Binance Pay, a crypto payment technology that enables fintechesque user-to-user payments outside the typical crypto payment parameters of Binance.

Conclusion

It is often said that the world is a global village. What better way to break financial and socio-cultural barriers isolating us from each other than innovating, easier and faster ways to move its most popular commodity: money? Accelerating cryptocurrency in Africa will do more than foster financial inclusion and facilitate remittance.

Other factors that would automatically fit into the big picture are financial education, e-commerce, economic stability, investment accessibility, and entrepreneurship. For Africa and cryptocurrency in this digital age, the time is now.