Pan-African bank, Ecobank has asked Fintech entrepreneurs in Africa to apply for its 3rd edition of the Ecobank Fintech Challenge, which gives African start-ups the opportunity to promote their fintech solutions, and potentially partner with Ecobank to roll-out their solutions across Ecobank’s 33 markets in Africa as well as France.
The Ecobank Fintech Challenge, which was designed in partnership with the advisory firm Konfidants and is supported by several partners across Africa and globally welcomes submissions from all start-ups and developers in any of Africa’s 54 countries.
According to Ecobank, all Finalists will be inducted as Ecobank Fintech Fellows, participate in a business boot camp followed by an Awards and Innovation Fair at the headquarters of the Ecobank Group in Lomé, Togo in June 2020.
“As a banking group, we continue to be amazed at the many ways in which fintechs are transforming banking across Africa. We look forward to the new innovations and partnership opportunities that will come with the 2020 edition,” said Ecobank Group Executive, Operations & Technology, Eddy Ogbogu.
The bank disclosed that Fellows will qualify to explore the following opportunities including multinational product rollout: an opportunity to pursue integration with Ecobank and potentially launch products in Ecobank’s Pan African footprint and service provider partnerships. Ecobank may select start-ups as a pan-African service partner within the bank’s ecosystem.
Others are access to Ecobank’s Pan-African Banking Sandbox: Fellows will be given access to Ecobank’s APIs to test and improve their products for the pan-African market and mentoring and networking support in the network of global and African partners of the Group.
It added that the Ecobank Fintech Challenge and fellowship have been improved upon to create even add value for Ecobank and the Fintechs. “We took feedback from the past editions and one of the major innovations this year is the opportunity for shortlisted Fintech’s to access our APIs through our Pan African Sandbox,” said Djiba Diallo, Ecobank Senior Fintech Advisor.