ATF 2024: Comviva's Willie Ellis on growing fintech services in Africa

Comviva's VP of Sales, Willie Ellis, spoke to Connecting Africa's Associate Editor, Matshepo Sehloho, at Africa Tech Festival 2024 in Cape Town, South Africa, about how the company is working with local operators to grow mobile financial services on the continent.

Comviva, a subsidiary of Tech Mahindra, specializes in mobility solutions offering digital financial services, customer value management and digital lifestyle solutions.

"We have a product team that delivers software for telecommunications providers and enterprises alike, we have been in Africa providing services ranging from our fintech platforms to our marketing platform and more recently to our revtech platforms," he explained.

"Africa has been our home for over 20 years, in terms of products and services, we have been working on the ground with the telecommunications operators and we are very proud to be associated with the leading telcos in Africa," he added.

Africa's fintech ecosystem

Ellis said that some of the challenges facing Africa are issues with banking the unbanked and closing the digital divide.

He said that Comviva provides mobile financial services solutions to major telcos on the continent like Airtel, Orange and MTN to help increase financial inclusion.

He forecast that in the future the continent will see even more democratization in the fintech sector and continued growth in mobile financial services.

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"We will continue to invest, not only on the software side but also on the services side to grow together with these telco companies for the foreseeable future," Ellis explained.