HiPipo Money

Across Africa, informal cross border traders are irked by different bottlenecks. Among such challenges is lack of access to reliable, real-time trade and market information to support decision making.

It is this specific challenge that Trade Flow Analytics is addressing in Malawi. Trade Flow Analytics is a web solution that relies on data analysis to provide trade information including available markets and foreign exchange rates to cross-border traders.  

“We are a start-up Fintech that has been in the industry for less than a year. Basically, what we do is analyzing trade data to help cross border women. We make sure that these women have access to real-time data and able to have insights which are coming from a platform accessible any time so long as they have internet and a smart phone,” noted Deborah Jalakasi, the managing director of Trade Flow Analytics said.

She added: “Our platform is accessible on the Play Store with one having to download, install, subscribe at a small fee and then register. After registration, you can then login and access the dashboard. The dashboard has different modules such as market insights, forex, and trade regulations among others. We are delivering a data driven solution because when data is available, people are able to make good decisions.”

Jalakasi noted that this platform was inspired by her bad experience as an informal cross border trader operating between South Africa and Malawi.

“That time, I had no platform to refer to so when I got stock from South Africa, I came back to Malawi and tried to supply only to find that the prices had changed and I was at a loss. So, this idea came up for us to have an APP from which women can find the latest market information and avoid making loses.”

She noted that they first introduced the Trade Flow Analytics platform to women cross border traders at the Mchinji/Mwami border between Malawi and Zambia, with plans of rolling it out to other borders underway.

Jalakasi explained that as a start-up, their main challenges are getting updated trade data, digital & financial illiteracy, internet challenges, failure of many women traders to use smart phones and low user acceptance.

She urged the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative to support this platform through initiating collaborations with likeminded partners, capacity building and financial assistance.

“If the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative can come in with financial help, it will move us from one level to another. We shall produce posters and fliers that we shall use to sensitize and onboard more cross-border traders.”

Women in Fintech Hackathon winners.

Although developed in 2024, Trade Flow Analytics was upgraded in the inaugural COMESA Women in FinTech Hackathon for Zambia and Malawi, held in Lusaka in March, 2025. Thanks to the platform’s gender intentional approach and scalability potential, Trade Flow Analytics won this Hackathon with its winners flying home with USD 2,000 in prize money.

Trade Flow Analytics featured on Day 30 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc. 

Malawi based FinTech, PayChangu is supporting financial inclusion through a digital payment platform that simplifies transactions for businesses and individuals.

The PayChangu platform enables merchants to accept payments through mobile money and card payments thus providing customers with flexible payment options.

“At PayChangu, we help businesses; small or big to collect payments locally and globally. We have got APIs which developers use to integrate. We also have the payment gateway which is our biggest product. While we started the development of PayChangu in 2021, we got our license from the Reserve Bank of Malawi in July, 2024. Since then to date, our platform has transacted over 7 billion Malawian Kwacha. We have got over 4000 active merchants on our platform. We are doing well in Malawi and looking forward to being allover Africa,” Joshua Mwendo, the Chief Operations Officer at PayChangu said.

He added: “Our newest innovation is the instant direct bank transfer. This one allows our customers to do big transactions instantly via PayChangu. This allows for industries like real estate, car dealerships, hardwares and other big industries to integrate PayChangu and transact. This service is picking big interest from the Betting Industry as gamers are able to deposit 10, 15 million at once. Similarly, the Betting company is able to disburse wins of up to 500 million Kwacha in one transaction instead of writing multiple cheques.”

He noted that Malawi is still ‘a fresh market and virgin land when it comes to Technology, especially FinTech’, thus urging the organizers of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative to further support this ‘young yet nascent’ industry through capacity building, knowledge sharing and collaborations.

PayChangu featured on Day 29 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.

Ashers Foods, an Agriculture value addition start-up found some 200 kilometers outside Lilongwe, Malawi has a developed a digital payment platform that ensures that farmers get full value for their money.

Though in its infant stages, Pay per Coin seeks to ensure that farmers, offtakers and suppliers transact digitally; pay and receive the exact amounts without losing any coin.

“As part of our Agriculture value addition work, we found out that most offtakers and suppliers have challenges with handling payments and financial management. Many were complaining that whenever they are making payments, they lose money. For example, if one was paying 49 dollars and 20 cents, they would pay 50 dollars and won’t get the change/balance back. They end up losing money in these small figures, which becomes a lot at the end of the whole transaction. It is from this experience that we came up with Pay per Coin to encourage our suppliers and offtakers to use electronic payments which ensure that they pay the exact amount and don’t lose any coin,” Watupa Wyson Mtambo, the Founder and Operations Manager of Ashers Foods, the organization behind the Pay per Coin innovation said. 

Watupa noted that Pay per Coin allows its users to pay for their goods or services and also receive payment for the goods or services they supplied in local currency.

“Pay per Coin also allows other services such as purchase of talk time, payment of utilities bills, sending and receiving money. In a transaction, the platform allows you to pay the exact amount without losing any cents,” she said.

She noted that as a new platform, they are facing several challenges including poor connectivity, digital and financial illiteracy, limited funding and low public acceptability and trust of digital innovations.

She urged the organizers of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative to roll-out more digital and financial literacy trainings focusing on farmers and cross border traders as knowledge acquired from these workshops will propel their businesses to greater heights in addition to building more trust for digital innovations.

“CBC and HiPipo should give us more trainings that are in line with digital payment platforms and how such platforms can operate not only in one country but several countries. For example, I am also a cross border trader operating in Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and some times Mozambique. Such trainings on cross border digital payments platforms would help me and other cross border traders address issues such as forex exchange.” 

Pay per Coin featured on Day 28 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc. 

Those that have used local buses, and taxis will tell you that most payments are done in cash; with passengers usually paying for a full trip fare regardless of your drop off point.

It is such rigidities that YendaRide seeks to address in Zambia, through a digital platform that allows passengers to pay fares that are in sync with distance travelled.

“Our platform is a post-paid e-ticketing payment system that makes it easy for passengers to pay bus fares seamless. The genesis of this platform is that I identified a problem in the way passengers traditionally pay for bus fares on local routes. In a typical bus situation, a passenger pays with cash, expects change and even when the authorities come up with a standard bus fare, the operators don’t follow it. At the end, passengers are overcharged, and some time lose their balance. This affects bus owners too,” Colins Mulenga Nonde, Founder and CEO YendaRide said, adding:

“It is this mess that we seek to address. This is an electronic platform that calculates and allows you to pay the exact fare for your trip. The idea is that you should pay for the distance covered, not round payment or full fare even when you dropping off half way the trip. Our platform has come to ensure that customers don’t make such losses.”

Mulenga noted that YendaRide is an APP based platform, currently downloadable on the Google Play store.

“Once you download it on Google Play, you register and link the platform to your mobile money or bank account to enable you deposit and recharge the account. After this set up, you are able to start initiating trips and the platform will give you a QR code which is scanned by a conductor using a point of sale machine after which you are allowed to board. Bus owners are registered with us and issued with point of sale machines that they use to scan the tickets. Through the point of sale machines, the bus operators are able to see and monitor all transactions.”

He nonetheless noted that while this platform is exciting, the town council authorities are skeptical and less knowledgeable about such innovations thus ‘resistance to adopt’.

Mulenga applauded the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative for ‘encouraging Zambian FinTechs to take a lead in ensuring that more people are included in the digital payments ecosystem plus ensuring that payment systems are at the center stage of driving innovations.’

YendaRide featured on Day 27 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide. The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.

Robust365 is contributing to Zambia’s Digital and Financial Inclusion through empowering micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) to take control of their finances, make data driven decisions and achieve their business growth.

The tool allows small businesses to manage their finances, track quotations, invoices, income and expenses among other things. Its latest addition is a payment functionality.

“The financial technology solution we have created helps small businesses to manage their finances. Our system not only helps businesses manage finances but also allows payments. When our users send invoices, they directly receive payments on to their wallets,” Fredrick Alban, co-founder and CTO of Robust365.

Alban noted that while they started the development of their software in 2019, it at some point crushed and had to be redeveloped to meet the needs of the market.

“There are over 500 businesses using our platform. The main challenge we are facing is the fact that most small businesses have no records of their finances and are hesitant to migrate to digital. These, we are reaching out to and educating them to understand why they should digitize their business.”

He further revealed that low funding, limited technical skills and expertise are key barriers to Zambia and broadly Africa’s digitization and financial inclusion.

“Our market lacks technical knowledge. You find for example, we are failing to integrate the Mojaloop API on to our systems. It is not just about finances but more about the technical competence. We need to have the right technology and developers to build our FinTechs and boost our systems.”

Alban applauded the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative noting that “if it continues to operate over years, many start-ups which are still lagging behind will get a lot of achievements.”

Robust365 was featured on Day 26 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.

ValueFin is supporting micro, small and medium sized businesses in Zambia to scale and reach higher heights through connecting them to ready markets, and providing patient credit.

This according to Mukuka Bwalya, a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ValueFin Limited is part of their commitment to promote entrepreneurship and provide solutions to the social and economic challenges faced by communities at the bottom of the pyramid.

“At ValueFin, we work with low income entrepreneurs and provide three specific services. These are access to finance, market linkages and business formalization services,” Mukuka Bwalya, a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ValueFin Limited said.

She added: “From a financial inclusion perspective, we use a web-based loan management system that allows us to gather specific customer data points especially in the informal sector where there is no real record system. The system we have in place allows to leverage AI analytics to make credit decisions about what our customers need but also mitigate risk by following the patterns and behaviors of our customers.”

Mukuka noted that the ValueFin loan management system in flexible and accessible on an entry level smart phone thus making it easy for field agents to capture data required in ‘our day to day credit decision making’.

“We strongly believe that there should be a balance between touch and tech and thus ensure that in every market we work in, we have a physical presence so that from a trust perspective our customers can reach us to assist them whenever there is any challenge.”

She noted that ValueFin onboards 80 per cent women, serves about 500 women every month in 13 market locations and disburses average loans sizes of about 1500 Kwacha per person.

Even with this encouraging growth, Mukuka noted that low digital literacy, and low smart devices penetration are delaying last mile financial inclusion.

“We are looking for opportunities for collaboration because we believe that with collaboration, you can achieve anything. We are also improving our system to create more impact. Beyond that, we have also noticed that our customers have a lot challenges around micro insurance when tragedy befalls them. We are looking for ways of partnering with strategic partners and providing a holistic service that captures services like micro insurance to our customers.”

ValueFin was featured on Day 25 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.