African fintech raised over US$1.3 billion in 2021 alone, making it the fastest-growing start-up industry in Africa. The success of fintech companies is being fueled by several trends, including increasing smartphone ownership, declining internet costs, expanded network coverage, and a young, fast-growing, and rapidly urbanising population.
With its current upward trend, African fintech can be perfectly poised to quickly advance Africa’s global competitiveness through an increase in the exporting of fintech services globally. African fintech has a significant impact on day-to-day life on the continent.
There are difficulties on these productive grounds. The expansion of financial inclusion in Africa is being stifled by regulatory uncertainty and regional differences. As a result, the continent’s fintech industry has called for the creation of a Pan-African regulatory body to establish comprehensive regulatory guidelines for regions as opposed to for entire nations.
Certain governments and the private sector are constantly working to provide regulatory policy frameworks for businesses, customers, and economies, with a current emphasis on:
- Regulations – digital-only banks and fintech are influenced by but independently regulated from the traditional financial system regulations.
- Anti Money Laundering Scrutiny – more regulatory bodies are insisting on compliance herewith, worldwide there is a clamp down on non-compliant companies. This requires the verification of information received from the client to avoid fraudulent, terrorist, or other illegal activities being facilitated, supported by other processes such as Know Your Customer.
- Consumer centrism – fintech must be vigilant in consumer education, especially the consequences of services and products that did not exist before, protecting the consumer from being exploited.
- Protection of Privacy and Security of Data – stored personal consumer information is susceptible to cyberattacks. Fintech companies must comply and have the necessary security systems and protocols to secure sensitive data.
Four sub-Saharan African cities, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Lagos, and Cape Town, are featured in the Global Fintech Index of 2020 list of the top 100 fintech ecosystems and account for the majority of the continent’s fintech start-up funding.
The nations represented by the aforementioned four cities have made significant progress toward regulatory frameworks intended to safeguard stakeholders. While some approaches to regulations are universal across nations, others are specific to each market’s difficulties. What is certain is that these regulations are evolving quickly as technology access enables this market to grow significantly.
No matter how big the fintech, these changes make it impossible for it to succeed because of the expense and/or inconvenience they cause by having an effect on every stage of the customer relationship lifecycle.
Two of the four African cities that are represented in the top 100 Global Fintech Index are located in South Africa, where Bizzamm is from. Its clients can automate their business processes with the help of the user-friendly, intuitive, and reasonably priced tool known as Bizzamm, which also satisfies most (if not all) of the regulations in effect at the time.
With an all-in-one, tamper-proof, end-to-end document management solution on blockchain, Bizzamm is the future of affordable business processing. It offers management, solutions, and control over the rising regulatory demands mentioned here, but most importantly, it places a strong emphasis on customer convenience.
Bizzamm provides a non-exhaustive list of tools to help with and manage compliance in relation to the four areas mentioned above, including the ability to create custom document templates, the use of verification, validation, and mandatory fields. The highly secure yet flexible cloud environment where Bizzamm is housed keeps data safe and offers convenience when searching for documents by setting automatic reminders for actions required by specific parties by specific dates. Only authorised access and authorised changes to documents are permitted with role and permission-based access. When a document is completed, Bizzamm’s electronic signature is anchored to the blockchain, giving it an immediate unique digital fingerprint, a permanent record of creation, and the ability to be tamper-proof.
Globally, laws governing the secure collection, storage, and processing of sensitive client data are becoming more comprehensive, all-encompassing, and enforceable. Businesses can easily, practically, and affordably become compliant with Bizzamm in a way that benefits their clients.