mobile-payments
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The Ferry Ticket That Outlived the Machine
When Hurricane Sandy knocked out New York ferry ticket machines, a young company’s phone app kept fares moving. Bytemark spent the next decade turning that emergency workaround into transit payment plumbing.
Ooredoo Tunisie wants a place in your living room
The mobile operator is making home broadband a bigger part of its business. Its 5G bet comes with a useful lesson: the network launch is only the beginning.
Splitwise’s $30 Million Bet on Making Friendship Less Awkward
A rent calculator became the default memory for group money. Now Splitwise has to prove that charging at the moment of maximum inconvenience will not undo the trust it spent 15 years building.
The Phone-Top-Up App That Grew Into Brazil's Financial Swiss Army Knife
RecargaPay started with prepaid minutes. Now it wants one app to handle the small, constant money jobs of Brazilian life - and turn that daily utility into credit, savings and merchant relationships.
How a Bought Domain and a Matt Damon Ad Built a 150-Million-User Crypto Empire
It bought one of the most valuable domains on the internet, put its name on a Los Angeles arena, and spent a decade with no outside investors. Then Citadel Securities showed up.
How a Forgotten Wallet Turned Into America's Verb for Money
Venmo turned paying a friend back into a social ritual - complete with emojis and a public feed. Fifteen years later, "just Venmo me" is how a generation moves money.
BuyPower
BuyPower is a Nigerian bill-payment platform that lets people buy prepaid and postpaid electricity tokens - plus airtime, data and TV subscriptions - online and through its mobile app, 24/7. Founded in 2016 in Abuja after its founders grew tired of queueing at utility offices, it integrates directly with Nigeria's electricity distribution companies (DisCos) and has grown into a cash-flow-positive business reporting roughly $20.6M in revenue by the end of 2024. It was the first company from Northern Nigeria backed by Y Combinator (W17).
Spring in Africa
Spring in Africa is a Nigerian-rooted fintech that lets people and small businesses send, receive, and hold money across borders in both fiat and crypto. It began as Wallet.ng, grew into Wallets Africa, and in 2023 launched Spring, a multi-currency wallet that pairs an instant account number, cashback, and payment links with Ethereum and stablecoin transactions shown in plain USD. Backed by Y Combinator (W19), Michael Seibel, Microtraction, Samurai Incubate, and Mozilla, the company has processed millions of dollars a month for tens of thousands of consumer and business accounts.
YouTrip
YouTrip is a Singapore-based fintech that operates a multi-currency mobile wallet and companion Mastercard prepaid card, letting travelers and everyday spenders hold and exchange 10 currencies in-app and pay in more than 150 currencies overseas at wholesale FX rates with no added transaction fees. Founded in 2018 by Caecilia Chu and Arthur Mak, the company has expanded from consumers into SMEs through YouBiz, a corporate multi-currency card, and processes roughly US$15 billion in annual transaction volume across Singapore, Thailand and Australia.
Upped Events Inc.
Upped Events is a Philadelphia-based, software-only event management and payments platform that bundles ticketing, contactless mobile payments, on-site point-of-sale, CRM, mapping, staff and partner management, and real-time analytics into one system. Built for food and drink festivals, fairs, conventions, and community events, Upped aims to raise attendee spend and organizer ROI while cutting the number of tools a team has to juggle. Founded in 2020 by Mark Kozlowski, Louis Blitzman, and Filip Risteski, the company was acquired by Events.com in May 2025.
Clickatell
Clickatell is a chat commerce and messaging platform that helps brands talk to and transact with customers across SMS, WhatsApp and other channels. Founded in 2000 in Cape Town, it was the first company to wire businesses on the internet to consumers on mobile phones using SMS in four lines of code. Twenty-five years later it powers chat banking, tokenized WhatsApp payments and Chat-2-Pay with Visa for over 10,000 customers worldwide.
TBCASoft
TBCASoft is a Silicon Valley blockchain company building a consortium-based distributed ledger that lets telecom carriers, mobile payment apps and banks interoperate across borders. Its HIVEX payment network lets travelers pay with their home QR-code wallet abroad without merchants changing POS systems, while the CBSG Consortium and CCIS identity framework extend the same trust rails to digital identity and authentication. Founded in 2016 by Ling Wu, it is backed by SoftBank and Naver and connects payment apps reaching tens of millions of users across Asia.
Sentz Global
Sentz (formerly MobileCoin) is a San Francisco-based fintech building a free, self-custodial mobile wallet that lets people send, save, receive and earn in stablecoins. Its dollar-pegged eUSD moves money across borders in seconds for a fraction of a cent, with end-to-end encryption and full user custody. Used in 180+ countries with deep traction in Nigeria, Sentz targets freelancers, remote workers and families sending remittances, and offers up to 8% yield through Sentz Earn.