2023 Supporting Partners

About the Challenge

The Ecobank Fintech Challenge identifies and partners Fintechs that are ready to scale and provides them with support and access to opportunities in Ecobank’s 35 African markets. The goal? To contribute to their growth as potential Pan African Fintech success stories.


The Challenge is open to all Fintechs on the African continent. Interested Fintechs can apply by sending details of their product as well as a demo here. These products must address one or more of a specific set of pain points which can be found here.


The selected finalists participate in the Ecobank Fintech Challenge Grand Finale. The ultimate winner for 2023 will be awarded a cash prize of $50,000. All finalists are inducted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship, which affords them the opportunity to explore deals, integration and commercial partnership with the Ecobank Group.

What's in it for you: Benefits and Opportunities

Become a finalist; get inducted as an Ecobank Fintech Fellow and stand a chance to explore the following opportunities:

Once in a lifetime opportunity to pursue integration with Ecobank and potentially launch products in Ecobank’s over 30 markets across Africa.
The top three winners at the Challenge will be awarded $15,000, $12,000 and $10,000 cash prizes respectively.
Service provider partnerships
Start-ups may be selected by Ecobank as local country-level partner in any of Ecobank’s 33 country ecosystem.
Access to Ecobank’s Pan-African Banking Sandbox
Fellows will be given access to a dedicated team to support Ecobank's API tests, to enable Ecobank improve their products for the pan-African market.
Access to Partner Network
Founders will be inducted as Ecobank Fintech Fellows, granting them access and relationships to a vast network of global and African Accelerators, potential Investors, as well as mentors.
The Challenge offers opportunities for Fintechs to potentially integrate with Ecobank’s existing digital offerings. The existing digital offerings include Ecobank Omni, Ecobank electronic financial supply chain(eFSC), Ecobank Xpress, Ecobank Mobile APP or USSD, MasterPass™ QR, mVISA™ & mCash, etc. You can learn more about these platforms here. We’d like applicants to pitch us how their solutions can add value to these existing Ecobank digital offerings.

Applicant's Journey

1

Mid June 2023

Apply

2

End of July 2023

Initial
Shortlisting

3

Mid August 2023

Finalists
Announcement

4

Early October 2023

Innovation Fair
& Grand Finale

5

October - December 2023

Ecobank FIntech
Fellowship

6

November 2023 - April 2024

Commercial Partnership
Exploration

Pain-Points: What We’re Looking For

We are looking for futuristic and innovative Fintech products in the following areas:
  • Improvement of customer experience both online and at the branch
  • Digital solutions using analytics/customer insights and AI to offer tailored adverts
  • Management of complaints on the Digital channels.
  • Digital solutions using analytics/customer insights and AI to offer tailored adverts
  • Acceleration of resolution process
  • Digitization of customer journey
  • Proactive support to customer
  • Personalised Customer Interaction (Self-service)
  • Defined reporting outcomes to measure value
Financial Inclusion
We welcome cutting-edge solutions capable of improving the lending process to SMEs:
  • Digital customer on boarding (Consumers, SME/Merchant, Investment Banking)
  • Increasing our payment wallet size across our network
We welcome cutting-edge solutions capable of improving the lending process to SMEs:
  • 360° view on customers' and prospects' financial activities with other FIs
  • Digitzation of the lending journey for SMEs
Ecosystem aggregation
We are interested in dynamic innovations in the following areas
  • SME/Merchants onboarding and payment integration
  • Niche merchant aggregation through tailored solutions per sector
  • Facilitate mobile collections with merchants that enable synchronization and consolidation with our Xpress point system
Internal tools
We are looking for:
  • Digital solutions which improve sales force performance
Payments
We’d be happy to learn how you can help us solve problems around:
  • Offline mobile to mobile payments (Dead Zones)
  • Increasing our payment wallet size within the African context
Any other relevant product categories
  • Any other solution that will revolutionize banking and payments in Africa.
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