The Hard Thing about (Consumer) Payments in Africa

On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’ll hear from Wiza Jalakasi, Director for Africa Market Development at EBanx, a payments processor headquartered in Brazil. He’ll shed some light on why building payment rails in Africa is deceptively hard work—from why some payment methods work better in some places than others to whether infrastructure-building or enabling payments through APIs is the best way to create value.

Tune in to hear about:

[5:41] Key milestones in payments infrastructure creation

[11:53] Why certain payment methods gain traction in different areas

[15:39] How consumer payments work and what the infrastructure looks like

[26:11] Back end infrastructure builders vs. API players 

[33:30] VC leapfrogging logic vs. the path toward building a massive payments infrastructure business 

[46:34] Similarities in payments problems across emerging markets

[52:50] Pressing problems remaining to be solved for payments to be functional 

[1:00] Counterintuitive first principle

Recommendations:

• Wiza Jalakasi. Wiza’s website, including his writing

• Frontier Fintech, Samora Kariuki's newsletter, mentioned by Wiza

• The Hard Thing About Subscription Payments in Africa. The piece Wiza referenced in this episode

• The Subtext. A newsletter written by Osarumen Osamuyi, referenced by Wiza

• Chasing Outliers. Why Context Matters for Early Stage Investing in Africa, a report I co-authored on VC investing in Africa 

  
  

Connect on social media:

• Wiza Jalakasi on LinkedIn
• Wiza Jalakasi on Twitter
• The Trajectory Africa on LinkedIn
• Tayo Akinyemi on LinkedIn
• Tayo Akinyemi on Twitter