Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered fintech company Optasia is stepping up its push into South Africa, betting that AI-driven credit scoring can unlock financial services for millions of people who remain underserved by the country’s formal banking sector.
Speaking to ITWeb in an interview yesterday, Optasia CEO Salvador Anglada said South Africa presents a unique opportunity.
He noted that while the country boasts one of Africa’s most developed banking industries, millions of people remain either unbanked or underbanked, and are still excluded from traditional lending because they lack conventional credit histories.
The Dubai-headquartered company, which listed on the JSE last year, uses AI and alternative data to assess creditworthiness instead of relying on salary slips, bank statements or traditional credit bureau information.
It says the technology enables financial institutions and mobile operators to extend small loans to customers who would otherwise struggle to access formal credit.
“South Africa is a unique case because it is a very banked country, with very well-established banks,” Anglada said.
“At the same time, it is still a very cash-based economy. People receive their salaries and often immediately cash them out. Despite the sophistication of the banking sector, there are still between 15 million and 20 million people who are either unbanked or nearly banked.”
He believes this population represents a significant growth opportunity for AI-powered lending platforms capable of analysing non-traditional financial behaviour.
AI replaces traditional credit scores
Rather than determining whether an individual qualifies for a loan using conventional banking records, Optasia analyses thousands of data points generated through everyday digital activity.
The platform processes information from sources such as mobile airtime purchases, mobile wallets, digital payments and cash-in and cash-out transactions. Machine learning models then analyse these patterns to estimate how much a customer can realistically afford to borrow and repay.
“What we want to know is not simply whether someone deserves a loan,” Anglada explained.
“It is about understanding how much they can afford to repay. We recreate something similar to a credit score using alternative data.”
Depending on the customer, the platform analyses thousands of variables, with some profiles containing as many as 100 000 individual features.
“We need data that comes from airtime consumption, wallets people use for transactions and digital payments. It is not about salary slips or bank movements. We analyse these alternative data sources to understand customer behaviour.”
The AI models continuously process this information to generate affordability assessments in real-time, allowing lending decisions to be made almost instantly, he added.
Massive scale
The company says its technology is already operating at significant scale globally.
According to Anglada, Optasia operates across 38 countries, serves approximately 130 million customers every month and processes more than 30 million credit decisions every day.
The platform distributes over $6 billion in loans annually through partnerships with banks, mobile operators and digital service providers.
The company originally built its business around airtime advances more than a decade ago before expanding into broader digital microfinance.
Although cash loans now dominate the business, airtime credit still accounts for roughly a quarter of Optasia’s operations.
The company’s AI-powered lending model has attracted investor attention. Optasia’s JSE listing was several times oversubscribed, while institutions including FirstRand and Standard Bank backed the business during its listing process.
Anglada said becoming a listed company has also changed how the business operates.
“I probably spend about 50% of my time on governance matters now,” he said.
“The listing process was fantastic and the level of investor interest exceeded our expectations, but after listing the real journey starts. You still need to grow the company, while meeting the governance and disclosure requirements that come with being a public company.”
South African partnerships
Rather than entering the retail banking market directly, Optasia works through a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2X) model.
B2B2X is a modern business model extending traditional B2B and B2C frameworks by combining resources across multiple partners, such as enterprises, service enablers and third-party vendors, to deliver bundled value to end-users.
Optasia’s partners include mobile network operators and banks that use the company’s AI platform to extend credit to their own customers.
The company already works with South African mobile operators through airtime credit products and has partnerships with local financial institutions.
It also plans to deepen relationships with banks, while exploring collaborations with loyalty programmes that could provide additional customer data for AI models.
“We are going to continue working with mobile operators because they are critical partners,” Anglada said.
“We also see opportunities with banks to address customers at the lower end of the market, and we are looking at other ecosystems, including loyalty programmes, where there is valuable customer data.”
Utility finance next
Beyond traditional lending, Optasia is also expanding into utility finance.
Anglada said the company recently acquired utility finance platform Finergi Global, which enables consumers to purchase prepaid electricity using short-term credit before repaying the amount later.
Optasia announced the acquisition of Finergi Global in March for an initial upfront consideration of R497.6 million ($30 million).
Given South Africa’s extensive prepaid electricity market, he believes this could become another significant growth area.
“We see South Africa as a very interesting prepaid meter market where advanced utility loans could provide real value.”
AI evolving with GenAI
While AI has always been central to Optasia’s business, the emergence of generative AI is reshaping internal operations as well.
The company is deploying AI agents to automate internal processes, while equipping employees with generative AI tools to improve productivity.
“We have always been an AI company,” Anglada said. “We use AI to classify, clean and analyse massive amounts of data before generating our credit scores through machine learning.
“Now, with generative AI and large language models, we are automating internal processes and introducing AI agents across the company. We are also equipping employees with these tools to improve productivity.”
For Optasia, generative AI represents an additional layer of efficiency rather than a replacement for the machine learning models that already underpin its lending platform.
As competition intensifies in South Africa’s digital lending market, the company believes combining AI with alternative data could enable banks and telecoms operators to extend responsible credit to millions of consumers who remain beyond the reach of traditional financial services.
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