We will never hear the end of it, and with good reason. Money transfers and e-payment solutions are fires that simply won’t be put out. With more and more telcos jumping into this pool, African citizens are spoiled for choice on which e-payments to choose from.
In an interview with HumanIPO, Sirak Mussie the founder of FloCash, speaks on how e-commerce is taking off at an amazing speed in Africa, and how the company intends to take a piece of this delicious cake.
FloCash was founded in the UK in 2010 with a vision to build Africa’s first open payment network. Two years later and the company boasts of over 5 million customer reach in 10 African countries. FloCash enables over 120 countries to receive and send payments, hence opening up African for e-commerce with the world. “We are currently processing $150k transactions per month,” Sirak said.
But this didn’t come with a wave of challenges. Establishing money transfer with independent players such as banks, in different countries has been a quagmire, though this has not slowed the company down. “Building an open model requires that FloCash acts as the medium through which various networks can communicate and are able to transact. Another huge challenge is addressing the regulatory barrier related to intra African payment services,” Sirak reiterated.
Just recently, FloCash came in 4th in the Forbes Top 20 Tech Startups in Africa. This was a mark of confidence over what they are doing in the African e-commerce field. “We are delighted to be named by Forbes among the best in technology in Africa and it’s wonderful to be recognized by such an esteemed organization. Such recognitions underline the importance role technology plays in Africa’s development,” Sirak told HumanIPO.
The future looks bright for this company as it intends to open up its outreach to more African countries and bring in more international players to offer options and variety to African businesses. “The availability of cheap bandwidth through the various undersea cable networks will result in a dramatic increase in e-commerce services in Africa. FloCash will be uniquely positioned to act as the engine for e-commerce growth and the platform of choice for intra-African trade,” he concluded.
