Africa’s largest bank-Standard Bank- wants to bring the continent’s small and informal businesses into its fold. In a deal announced recently, Standard Bank would invest US$4 million into Nomanini, a fintech company that connects banks and distributors to informal merchants. Standard Bank will offer a mobile application that provides credit to customers in 14 countries including South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria. Leveraging Nomanini’s data and client lists, bank hopes to offer loans to first time users thereby expand its customer base and boost its branchless banking services.
The deal will help also Nomanini. The Cape Town-based company can widen its services and scale into new markets by piggy-backing on the bank’s band width.
Standard Bank was founded in 1862 as a South African subsidiary of the British overseas bank Standard Bank, under the name The Standard Bank of South Africa. Now the bank has operations in countries including Ivory Coast Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda in Africa and many other countries in other continents.
Nomanini is a Cape Town based company that provides technology for pre-paid services. It provides affordable access to payments for everyone, everywhere. They are an enterprise payments platform provider that optimizes transactions in the informal retail sector across Africa.
