africa-fintech
(6)
Chari
Chari is a Moroccan B2B e-commerce and fintech company that turned the country's corner grocery stores into digital customers. Through one app, the traditional shopkeepers who form the backbone of North African retail can order fast-moving consumer goods and get them delivered in under 24 hours, keep their customer credit ledgers, accept card payments, pay bills, and tap embedded financial services. Founded in 2020 by Ismael Belkhayat and Sophia Alj, Chari was the first Moroccan startup admitted to Y Combinator (S21). In October 2025 it raised a $12M Series A - the largest in Morocco's history - and became the first VC-backed Moroccan company to win a payment institution license from the central bank, the foundation for its Banking-as-a-Service platform.
Waza
Waza is a Y Combinator-backed (W23) B2B payments and liquidity platform that helps businesses in emerging markets - starting with Nigeria and Ghana - pay global suppliers, hold multi-currency balances, and access USD without the friction of traditional correspondent banking. Founded in 2023 by fintech veterans Maxwell Obi and Emmanuel Igbodudu, the company processes hundreds of millions of dollars in annual payment volume and in 2025 launched Lync, a multi-currency banking product positioned as an alternative to Mercury for African startups.
inyad
inyad is a Moroccan-founded fintech building mobile-first software for small and micro merchants across Africa and the Middle East. Its apps - the Konnash digital ledger and the Mahaal all-in-one point-of-sale, invoicing and payments platform - help corner shops, cafes, salons and independent traders move their bookkeeping, sales and payments off paper and onto a phone. Founded in 2018 by former McKinsey consultant Moncef Chlouchi, the company reports a user base in the millions across 10-plus countries and has raised roughly $14M from investors including Partech, Al Mada Ventures, CDG Invest and FJ Labs.
Moove
Moove is an African-born global mobility fintech that finances vehicles for gig-economy drivers who are shut out of traditional bank lending. Using alternative, revenue-based credit scoring built on ride-hailing and delivery earnings, Moove lets drivers on platforms like Uber lease brand-new cars and pay them off through a share of their weekly income - a 'drive it, own it' model. Founded in Lagos in 2020 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, it now operates one of the world's largest managed ride-hail fleets and has become Waymo's autonomous-fleet operations partner across major US and UK cities.
Abuzar Royesh
Abuzar Royesh is the founder and CEO of Pastel (DataServe AI), a U.S.- and Nigeria-based company building agentic AI software that helps regional, mid-tier, and community banks automate onboarding, compliance, fraud detection, and anti-money-laundering work. Born in Afghanistan and educated at Tufts and Stanford, where he was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, he is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. He is also the founder and board chair of the 30 Birds Foundation, which evacuated more than 450 Afghans, mainly schoolgirls, after the 2021 Taliban takeover.
Iain Usiri
Iain Usiri is the co-founder and CEO of Ramani, a Tanzanian fintech building financial infrastructure for Africa's consumer-packaged-goods supply chains. A Stanford computer science graduate and former Salesforce product manager, he gave up his US immigration status and flew home one-way in 2019 to start the company with his brother Calvin and friend Martin Kibet. Ramani gives micro distribution centers free point-of-sale and inventory software, then monetizes through lending - and in 2022 raised a $32M Series A led by Flexcap Ventures after passing through Y Combinator's W20 batch.