Two Nigerian startups, 9 others selected for 2018 Ecobank Fintech Challenge

Ecobank has announced finalists of the Ecobank Fintech Challenge 2018.

Two Nigerian fintech startups, Wallet, Secapay and nine other startups across the African continent and beyond were among finalists for the 2018 Ecobank Fintech Challenge.

The other ten startups include Lypa (Kenya), Wallet.ng, Nala (Tanzania), Litee (Benin), SESO Global (South Africa), InvestED (Sierra Leone), Eversend (France), Virtual Identity (South Africa), MojiPay (Togo), Awamo (Germany).

The pan-African banking group announced the finalists for the 2nd edition of the annual challenge, a competition for Africa-focused technology start-ups, in a statement issued on Wednesday, August 8, 2018.

The statement added that an innovation fair and awards ceremony will honour the start-ups on August 30, 2018, at the global headquarters of Ecobank in Lomé, Togo.

At the ceremony, the start-ups will exhibit and pitch their products to a jury for the Ecobank Africa Fintech Prize, which will be awarded the top innovator and two runners-up.

The top three innovators will win cash prizes worth US$10,000, US$7,000, and US$5,000 respectively.

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According to the statement, Ecobank will enrol all eleven finalists into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship.

The fellowship will run for a period of six months during which Ecobank Fintech Fellows will benefit from an opportunity to further explore partnerships with the bank.

Eddy Ogbogu, Ecobank Group Executive for Operations and Technology, said Africa has a proud history of innovation, and today’s fintech start-ups are the potential giants of tomorrow.

In 2017, all the winners were from the Nigerian fintech space out of the 20 finalists. Nigeria's IroFit emerged overall winner, while Kudi and Paylater made the second and third positions respectively.

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