Trust Walks on Foot, Even in the Digital Era
Trust doesn't live in code. If you've never sat under a neem tree in Saint-Louis, explaining interest calculations to a skeptical women's savings group, you might think fintech is just APIs and slick user interfaces. It's not. Out here on the ground, tech doesn't mean anything if the user doesn't trust the person holding the phone. During my years as a microfinance officer in Senegal, I watched people walk past digital payment kiosks to hand cash to someone they knew. Why? Because you can't look an app in the eye.
The fintech boom in emerging markets is a spectacular story, no doubt. But the real story isn't the software. It is the hard, slow work of pulling the unbanked and underbanked into the digital economy. The numbers are big—tens of millions of people finally getting mobile accounts and access to basic banking. Yet, the real breakthrough is psychological. We’ve turned skepticism into utility. Still, the divide remains deep.
The Cold Hard Growth of African and Middle Eastern Fintech
The numbers coming out of the CEMEA region are dizzying, even to someone like me who prefers to measure impact in crop yields and household savings rather than VC pitch slides. Between 2020 and 2021, the number of tech startups in Africa tripled. Think about that: from a handful of small operations to an estimated 5,200 companies in just one year. Meanwhile, fintechs in the Middle East pulled in $503 million in funding across 41 deals in 2021 alone. That is a massive inflow of capital.
But funding isn't success; it is runway. And runway can disappear fast if you don't build trust on the ground. The regulatory environment in West Africa and the wider region is a patchwork. Managing compliance across borders is a massive headache. If an entrepreneur in Lagos wants to expand into Senegal or Kenya, they are essentially starting over. They must navigate entirely different regulatory frameworks, payment rails, and consumer habits. That is why so many promising startups hit a brick wall after their Seed or Series A rounds. In a changing landscape, corporate venture capital shifts can further complicate access to long-term funding.
The Visa Everywhere Platform as an Innovation Runway
This is where accelerators and partners can actually help, provided they don't treat our markets like a charitable project. The Visa Everywhere Initiative, now in its eighth year, has connected nearly 12,000 startups from over 100 countries since launching in 2015. Through this web, those startups have raised over $16 billion in collective funding. For early-stage founders, this isn't just about cash prizes like the $50,000 for the global winner, $10,000 for the audience choice, or $10,000 for the Visa Direct category at the TechCrunch Disrupt finals.
No, the real prize is integration. The program plugs these local startups into Visa’s global network of financial institutions, merchants, and acquirers. As Alex McCrea, Vice President and Head of CEMEA Fintech Partnerships at Visa, noted: "The sheer breadth, depth and diversity across this region is really exciting. There’s just a tremendous amount of opportunity to do good and to do more." But to do good, you have to do the work. It is easy to write checks; it is much harder to integrate legacy systems with local payment options. When large financial entities step away or shutter their funding branches—as we saw when PayPal Ventures retired its startup program—it leaves a massive gap that programs like Visa Everywhere must fill.
ThriveAgric and the Reality of Nigerian Agribusiness
Look at what ThriveAgric did in Nigeria. They won the global Visa Everywhere competition in 2022, and it wasn't because they had the prettiest slides. It was because they did the dirty work on the ground. In Nigeria, agriculture employs more than 70% of the population. It is the heartbeat of the economy. Yet, most of these farmers are completely cut off from formal credit. They are unbanked, invisible to the financial system.
ThriveAgric built a business by digitizing the entire agricultural chain. They didn't just build an app; they went to the fields. They mapped lands, onboarded farmers, recorded harvest data, and managed inventory. In five years, they disbursed more than $100 million in financing to over 514,000 small farmers. Think about that scale. Co-founder Ayo Arikawe said: "The hard work we've put into ThriveAgric will ensure that technology is leveraged to empower farmers across the country." Visa partnered with them to integrate Visa Direct, which allows them to send money to farmers instantly. It's smart, compliant, and solves a real problem.
Building Sustainable Bridges Beyond the Buzzwords
We hear too much about open banking, artificial intelligence, and digital identities. Yes, these are useful. But they are tools, not solutions in themselves. The key to financial inclusion is building ecosystems where people can actually use their money without fear of being scammed or shut down by a sudden shift in local regulations. Public-private partnerships must focus on this boring stuff: interoperability, compliance, and consumer trust.
Without trust, the tech is just expensive noise. Startups must build relationships with local regulators early, not as an afterthought. Regulatory alignment is what keeps the lights on. It’s what turns a temporary fintech boom into a permanent economic shift, often supported by robust private credit data and institutional investment.