Global financial transactions are facilitated mainly by payment processors such as Visa or Mastercard. They are responsible for communication between banks and fintechs to settle transactions for consumers and businesses swiftly. Africa has it different. It’s not a predominantly card continent. Telecoms and banks lead most online financial transactions carried out in the region via mobile money wallets and bank accounts. But here’s the challenge: While both systems tend to work well when users make transactions within their unique environment, there’s no interoperability for transactions between them. An alternative payment network with connected wallets allowing a mobile money user to transact with a bank account would fix this problem, and that’s the premise of Ghana-based fintech Dash.
Dash’s alternative payment network brings together this mobile money and traditional banks and facilitates transactions for consumers and businesses. It doesn’t aim to replace mobile money or banks. Instead, its wallet allows users to access a plethora of services they can’t find on their traditional provider. Dash’s playbook is like Visa or Mastercard, routing payments through banks and telcos regardless of who issued it. So, users from different countries — Ghana, Nigeria, and Kenya, for now — can connect their bank or mobile money accounts to Dash, pay bills, and send and receive money to other users while the platform handles currency conversions. Dash’s seed round, led by New York-based private equity and venture capital fund Insight Partners, is one of the largest of its kind in Africa; only PalmPay’s $40 million tops it now. The round, which comes after a $500,000 pre-seed, continues a list of fintech deals amid a wave of innovation rippling through the sector, which accounted for up to 60% of Africa’s total VC funding last year.