Hey Fintech Friends ft Benjamin Fernandes (Nala Money)

Intro to the show. 0:00

• Welcome to one of the best news and fintech podcasts out there.

  Fintechionary: mpesa, a mobile banking service that allows users to store and transfer money through their mobile phones.

• News

Benjamin's background. 5:05

• Benjamin Fernandez, founder and CEO of Nala, and how he got involved in the payments industry in the first place.

• Why Africa is the most expensive region to transact in the world.

• Building African payment routes.

The challenges of payments across the continent. 8:11

• Going to Gambia

• Payments across Africa are going to be built over the next five to 10 years, and there is massive opportunity and challenges.

• The future of the African tech space over the next five to 10 years, and what the future of African tech will look like in the region.

• How African countries will be able to trade with each other more often and more frequently and also make sure the cost of these trades is low.

Responsibility of the diaspora to help the continent. 13:23

• The big question that everyone has been trying to ask themselves since independence is the question of what responsibility the diaspora has to Africa.

• The burden of financial support for African families in the U.K. is a lot of weight, and the burden falls on fellow African citizens.

• The two most popular reasons for sending money home are the health industry and the education industry.

How does the diaspora see the country? 18:48

• The african cross-border trade volume has doubled in the last two years, and there is no other region in the world where that has happened.

• There are many pull and push factors from this. For example, sometimes there was trade happening through cash on planes, and because of covid, a lot of those transactions have become digital.

• The market size is significantly massive. Most people don't realise how big it truly is.

How to build trust into a digital product? 23:19

• One of the things that has worked really well for Nala is transparency. They tell their customers every single thing they're building. They also do customer meetups.

• Nine out of 10 customers after one year still use Nala because of the honesty they are honest.