Nigeria's Paga, a provider of mobile money transfer solutions in Nigeria, and South Africa's Yoco, a mobile payments provider as well as Kenya's BitPesa, a universal payment and trading platform for Africans, were listed among the top 250 fintech private companies in the world in 2017.
The Fintech 250, as the report is called, is a list created by data firm CB Insights recognizing the 250 top private companies changing the face of financial services around the world. However, the list was not in a particular order - rather in alphabetical.
The Fintech 250 covers companies from insurance to blockchain to lending to wealth management to regtech, and more. The list is comprised of companies in sectors from across the fintech spectrum and across markets.
The Fintech 250 companies were selected by considering four factors. These are further described below;
- The momentum, which considers non-traditional signals including news mentions, sentiment, jobs data/hiring, social media, web traffic and usage, partnerships, and more.
- The market, which basically quantifies the health of the sector and industry the company is involved in, including funding, deals, exit activity, and hiring.
- The Money, which assesses financial signals including funding recency and total raised.
- And lastly, the investor quality, which weighs the quality of the investors participating in deals to the company, judging investors based on exits, returns, and portfolio quality.
Other notable companies present on the list but outside the African continent were GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Kickstarter and World Remit.
For a comprehensive list of all the 250 selected companies, click here.