Visa reveals array of African startups for Accelerator

Visa has unveiled 22 fintech startups from 12 African countries for the fourth cohort of its Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator. They showcase a diverse range of solutions aimed at advancing financial inclusion, supporting small businesses, and driving digital growth across the continent.

They include fascinating fintech startups from as far afield as Zimbabwe, Uganda, Morocco, and Botswana.

The announcement comes alongside the launch of applications for the fifth cohort, open to South African fintechs with a minimum viable product (MVP) or market-ready solution. Applications close on 15 August 2025.

The 12-week intensive programme offers mentorship, tailored training, networking opportunities, and access to funding and resources. It concludes with an in-person demo day, where startups pitch their innovations to key ecosystem players, funding partners, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

The initiative is part of Visa’s ongoing commitment to Africa’s digital economy and forms part of the company’s pledge to invest R17-billion in the continent by 2027 to transform the payments ecosystem.

Since its inception in 2023, the Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator has supported 64 fintechs across three cohorts, with an estimated cumulative portfolio value of R19-billion.

Participants have spanned 17 countries, with operations in 31 markets. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of these fintechs have included women in leadership roles. Collectively, they have added more than R54-million in revenue during the training period, and alumni have subsequently raised over R980-million.

The newly announced cohort brings together fintechs working on small and medium business (SMB) digitisation, lending, cross-border payments, payroll, business-to-business (B2B) payments, AI-powered payments, social commerce, climate insurance, and neo-banking.

Their solutions aim to address gaps in the formal financial system, where millions remain excluded from affordable credit and essential services, particularly in contexts of slow economic growth and high youth unemployment.

Startups shortlisted for Cohort 4 of the Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator

Zazu (South Africa): Zazu is a neobank for African small and medium-sized businesses, providing digital business accounts, expense management, invoicing, and bookkeeping tools in one platform.

BigDot.ai (Zimbabwe): BigDot is helping SMEs use less cash through digital transformation, seamless checkouts, and blockchain-powered financial inclusion.

ChatCash (Zimbabwe): ChatCash enables African SMEs to sell and get paid through popular messaging apps using AI-powered, multilingual tools. The platform integrates payments, customer engagement, and business resources.

Credify Africa (Uganda): Credify is bridging the trade finance gap for African importers by providing seamless access to capital, logistics, and cross-border payments.

Flend (Egypt): Flend is a digital NBFI for SME finance, providing tech-enabled, data-driven solutions to close the financing gap for underserved businesses in North Africa.

Hsabati (Morocco): Hsabati is a platform that helps businesses manage operations, enabling data collection and ecosystem scoring to facilitate financing through partner banks.

IPT Africa (Mauritius): IPT Africa provides cross-border payments solutions, including payroll processing, real-time FX pricing, and same-day bulk payments.

Lemonade Payments (Kenya): Lemonade’s white-label digital payments solution empowers businesses with secure, blockchain-powered wallets, without compromising user data.

Maishapay (Democratic Republic of Congo): Maishapay is an all-in-one B2B financial platform offering payroll solutions, digital payments, and POS terminals to help streamline transactions.

MNZL (Egypt): MNZL is expanding access to credit through a digital platform for asset-backed financing by tapping into consumers home and car equity.

Motito (Ghana): Motito is an asset financing marketplace that provides alternative payment options for customers to purchase essential assets.

Muda (Kenya): Muda is a digital asset exchange and OTC platform focused on cross-border payments and stablecoin liquidity solutions for African businesses and fintech’s.

mystocks.africa (Botswana): Mystocks.africa simplifies investing across African stock markets by providing a unified platform for trading all African stocks.

OKO Finance Ltd (Ivory Coast): OKO distributes automated climate insurance, allowing farms to boost their climate resilience and banks to de-risk their investment in agricultural projects.

PressPayNg (Nigeria): PressPayNg is an education-focused fintech platform that provides banking, financing, savings, and insurance solutions to help parents, guardians, youths, and students fund education.

Sevi (Kenya): Sevi streamlines B2B payments within non-digital value chains. This optimises efficiency in credit, payments and reconciliation for the supplier, and access to stock and stock financing for small retailers.

Shiga Digital Inc (Nigeria): Shiga Digital provides simplified access to decentralised financial solutions for the African market with a purpose-built Defi account.

ShopOkoa (Kenya): ShopOkoa provides AI-driven credit and payment solutions to small- and micro-enterprises in Africa. It operates as a membership-based system combining daily savings, revenue-based financing, and automated cashflow tracking.

Startbutton (Nigeria): Startbutton is a merchant of record helping businesses expand across Africa by paying and receiving local currency payments from their customers in a tax efficient and compliant manner, and without the need to setup local offices.

Twiva (Kenya): Twiva is a social commerce platform where businesses market and resell their products and services through social media influencers.

Vittas (Nigeria): Vittas empowers healthcare providers with access to tailored financing, digital tools, and payment solutions, enabling them to improve patient care.

Woliz (Morocco): Woliz is a fintech ecosystem transforming nano-stores into digital hubs with loyalty rewards, payments, and AI-driven operations.

* Apply for the Visa Africa Fintech Accelerator fifth cohort here.