Few industries have reshaped African society as rapidly as fintech. In just over a decade, the continent moved from a landscape dominated by traditional banks and manual processes to one where mobile wallets handle the majority of transactions, neo-banks operate without a single branch and millions of previously excluded people are finding their way into the formal financial system.
“I see fintech as a typical hype cycle growth story. People overestimate what it can do in the short term but probably underestimate quite significantly what it means in the medium to long term,” says Ryan Barlow, CEO of Sybrin.
As of 2025 data, Africa continues to solidify its position as the global leader in mobile money, processing roughly 70% of the total global transaction value. In South Africa, some neo-banks built their customer bases through self-service kiosks inside retailers while others opted to have no physical presence. But beyond the cities, digital financial services have not reached everyone. Smartphone penetration remains uneven, data comes at a high cost and roughly half of African adults remain unbanked or underbanked. “Africa has its unique challenges,” Barlow says. “It’s not that easy to transform digitally when you’re faced with some of those practicalities across the continent.” And then there’s the informal ‘kasi’ economy, last estimated to be worth around $649 billion annually across the continent and which is still largely cash-based.
Inclusion economics
Small merchants and informal traders have largely been excluded from formal financial services, not because they lack the cashflow, but because the cost of onboarding them has never made commercial sense. Closing that gap requires the compliance, identity verification and fraud screening infrastructure that allows institutions to bring those customers in. This is the infrastructure Sybrin provides across 18 countries (including a growing presence in the Philippines). In fact, a major Tanzanian bank has partnered with Sybrin to build a progressive web app with an offline capability, allowing agents to travel into rural communities with tablets and sign people up for bank accounts where connectivity is limited. “We’re assisting with the efficient digital onboarding of clients through agency banking,” says Barlow. “This allows the bank, through the use of agents and tablets, to sign people up and get them into the more formal and digital economy.”
From PayShap in South Africa to GhIPPS in Ghana as well as TCIB and PAPSS, local and cross-border instant payment infrastructure is expanding rapidly across the continent. Cross-border capability, once the exclusive domain of SWIFT and correspondent banking networks, is now emerging through regional schemes that settle in real-time (and at a significantly lower cost). But faster payments bring greater exposure, and as transaction volumes grow and settlement becomes instant, the fraud risk that comes with it cannot be an afterthought. “As a principle, it should be legislated in every country that there is some form of transaction monitoring and fraud protection for the consumer,” adds Barlow. “The scams are increasing, and with AI, scammers have the same ability to scale as defenders.”
What comes next
Stablecoins (crypto-currencies designed to maintain a stable value by pegging themselves to a reserve asset) are adding another layer of complexity to how money moves across the continent. Africa is already leading in adoption by volume, driven by the practical need to transfer funds across borders instantly, at lower costs and without exposure to volatile exchange rates. “The use cases are very real in developing nations where you want a hedge through exposure to foreign currency,” explains Barlow. The immutable nature of blockchain also means every transaction leaves a traceable record, making it harder for fraud to go undetected. “Whatever the rail, the need for transaction monitoring and the associated fraud management and dispute resolution does not go away,” he adds.
The fintechs that reshaped African banking a decade ago did so by being digital and mobile-first. The next wave is AI-first, and that creates a familiar cycle. “Can the incumbent fintechs transform quickly enough to keep up with the new challengers in this AI wave?” asks Barlow. For underserved communities, AI’s most important contribution is what it does to the economics of reaching them. Banks and fintechs have historically struggled to justify the cost of serving low-income and rural populations, but AI is changing that calculation fundamentally. It is why Sybrin is expanding into Ethiopia this year, a market of 120 million people where roughly half the population remains unbanked.
“Imagine being born into a country where you never physically hold cash in your entire life,” says Barlow. “That’s certainly where the world is moving.” For Africa, a continent that has already leapfrogged entire generations of financial infrastructure, AI may determine just how quickly the next billion people enter the formal economy.
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