Zeepay’s Takyi-Appiah: “The concept of WhatsApp is not proprietary anymore”

Andrew Takyi-Appiah, managing director and co-founder of Zeepay, spoke with Emmanuel Daniel about efforts around promoting financial inclusion through his venture Zeepay, the only currently existing non-telco fintech player to receive an Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) or mobile money license in Ghana. He described an average African user as highly dependent on a mobile device for accessing financial services. Takyi-Appiah also talked about how an innovative yet simple platform built on the over-the-top (OTT) instant messaging service players such as WhatsApp could offer the scale to penetrate millions who do not have access to formal financial services across the African sub-continent and help transform its payment ecosystem. In this RadioFinance session, emphasis was given to Africa’s status as leading continent for money-mobile services, and a pre-existing and well-established interoperable financial system infrastructure in Ghana could usher an all-inclusive growth in payments. The following key points were discussed during the interview: ● The African payment and remittance ecosystem is worth $250 billion and comprises more than 80 wallet service providers, 20 million Visa Direct bank cards and high penetration and usage of mobile all of which present a huge opportunity for Zeepay. ● As a fintech with interoperability at both back-end and front-end, Zeepay binds different parts of the ecosystem together into one single platform to transact and enable remittances to be paid into mobile wallets in Ghana. ● Zeepay is building its own ecosystem on the OTT messaging players like WhatsApp and Facebook through addition of multi-layer protocols such as two-factor authentication (2FA) and security to run payments on their instant messaging platforms. ● Wallets are filling the void through provision of mobile financial services to the population in Africa. ● Zeepay’s multi-layered open interoperable platform is able to cross every key player’s network in Ghana and has made receiving remittances convenient for its customers. ● The company does not do price discovery and makes margins on wholesale. ● Zeepay’s partnership with Visa enables it access to all bank accounts through Visa Direct. ● It aims to become a financial services supermarket with a multi-layer product focus which complements growth through monetisation of payments. ● Zeepay is building an immigrant-focused bank that will channel remittances in the African diaspora. ● There is an urgent need for the participants in the wallet ecosystem to work together to drive e-money into capital markets. The full transcript and video of the interview are available on: RadioFinance: https://bit.ly/3riMn0L Video on LinkedIn:https://bit.ly/3heZmvC Twitter: https://bit.ly/3nIhXTm YouTube: https://bit.ly/37FXnxt Audio on Spotify:https://spoti.fi/3hdDReN Apple Podcast:https://apple.co/38oVgxa Follow The Asian Banker on LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eSue7G5 Facebook: https://lnkd.in/fD9q6dK Twitter: https://lnkd.in/eYYAFqw Instagram: https://lnkd.in/e5YQsr5 #Wallet #Platform #Payments #Ecosystem #Remittance #Money #Bank #Markets #Model #Build #Players #Visa #WhatsApp #FinancialServices #Single #GrowYear

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