In just over a decade, East Africa moved from a landscape where millions lacked access to financial services to one where mobile money is woven into the fabric of everyday economic life.
M-Pesa is an East African success story which has been told many times. Women, rural populations and informal workers across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda gained access to payments, savings and remittances through a device in their pocket, without ever setting foot in a branch. Governments followed, digitising tax collection, licensing and public services through platforms like Kenya’s eCitizen, Rwanda’s Irembo and Tanzania’s government payment gateway, GePG.
Today, East Africa’s payments layer is mature, but the broader financial ecosystem is still evolving. “Mobile money is no longer a fintech product,” says Joe Kiragu, Sybrin’s Regional Director for East Africa. “It’s core infrastructure. The region has solved many problems, but the next level is moving from access to quality and embedded services.”
From access to empowerment
The first era of East African fintech was defined by whether someone could send and receive money digitally. But today, customers across the region are no longer simply looking to move money from A to B.
“Expectations have evolved,” says Kiragu. “Customers want platforms that will help them save, borrow, invest and insure.”
Safaricom’s ecosystem is a great example of how much has already changed. From M-Shwari for savings, Fuliza for short-term credit, and Zidi, a money market fund for investment and even insurance products, customers can now access a range of financial services on a single platform. “The first era of fintech was about send and receive,” Kiragu says. “We are in an era of growth, wealth, access to productive credit, managing risk and participating more effectively in the digital economy.”
Embedded and SME-led
For Kiragu, there are two trends that are driving East Africa’s fintech growth. The first is embedded finance, where financial services are built directly into non-financial platforms across agriculture, health, e-commerce and mobility rather than offered as standalone products. M-KOPA, for example, embedded smartphone and motorbike financing through a pay-as-you-go model that meets customers where they already are.
The second trend is SME-focused fintech. Here, Kiragu says, the opportunity remains largely untapped. There are, however, fintech solutions like Pezesha that are using alternative credit scoring to connect small businesses to lenders, moving beyond the peer-to-peer payment model.
“Many investors are now seeing SME digitisation as the next major fintech opportunity in East Africa,” Kiragu adds. “If you want to evaluate how an economy is growing, look at the SME sector and the middle class.”
Open banking is accelerating both trends, with institutions like Equity Bank, KCB and Co-operative Bank expanding their API offerings to enable plug-and-play integration that makes embedded products possible at scale.
Beyond borders
“Mobile money may have transformed domestic payments, but the next challenge is making regional payments equally seamless,” says Kiragu. Multi-currency complexity, dependence on USD and euro corridors, regulatory fragmentation and settlement delays mean that sending money across a regional border is still more difficult than sending it across a city.
But the expansion of the East African Community (EAC) and the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) are creating political momentum for change. There are also infrastructure initiatives like the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), which are beginning to provide the plumbing that regional commerce needs. Kiragu says for a region that has already demonstrated what is possible when the right infrastructure is in place, cross-border payments are the next frontier.
Intelligence as infrastructure
Digital identity and eKYC are also removing the barriers that have historically prevented people from accessing credit, insurance and investment – not because they lacked the means, but because providers could not verify who they were.
“Customers can now be verified remotely within minutes,” Kiragu explains. “A farmer in Turkana or a trader in Kigali could register with a national ID and biometrics, open an account digitally and access insurance and credit without visiting a branch.”
Modern, API-first infrastructure is giving fintechs the agility that legacy systems cannot match, compressing development cycles and enabling rapid product launches that serve real customer needs. “Through AI and data analytics, it’s possible to personalise products based on spending habits, transactional patterns and financial needs offering tailored lending, savings solutions and intelligent financial coaching at scale,” says Kiragu.
Ultimately, framing East Africa as a market that adopts innovations developed elsewhere misses what is actually happening on the ground. The region has consistently demonstrated an ability to solve complex financial challenges through practical, scalable solutions.
“East Africa is not merely a market for adopting financial innovations from elsewhere,” Kiragu says. “It is a leading source of innovation in its own right, and the region has the potential to shape the next generation of financial services.”
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