pawaPay is aiding seamless mobile money integrations. #40Days40FinTechs Zambia and Malawi edition, Day 24

pawaPay; one of Africa’s FinTech Giants is supporting financial inclusion through enabling hundreds of businesses to seamlessly make and collect payments.

Currently operation in at-least 19 African countries, pawaPay provides one API (Application Programming Interface) and one dashboard that integrate mobile money services in payment processes, making collections and disbursements faster and safer.

In Malawi, it has over the past 3 years established itself as a dependable mobile money aggregator.

“At pawaPay, we are a mobile money aggregator. This means that we enable merchants – our customers such as BetPawa to collect and disburse funds via mobile money. We enable customers to deposit money in to their wallets and to also collect/withdraw money from their wallets,” Arthur Muyepa, the pawaPay Country Manager for Malawi said.

He added: “We are regulated by the Reserve Bank of Malawi. We got our license in 2024. Before that, we worked on a 6 months pilot scheme regulated by the Central Bank. Since 2022, we have grown from working with one merchant to over 170 merchants in Malawi who are collecting and disturbing payments. In 2023 alone, we processed about USD 24 million while in 2024, we processed around USD 207 million. This points to the progress we are making.”

Muyepa noted that the FinTech Industry in Malawi still has a lot of untapped opportunities as most people are still unbanked and mobile money penetration is still low. He further highlighted limited interoperability, and less collaborations as key obstacles to financial inclusion.

“Unlike mature markets such as Kenya where there is a lot interoperability between banks and mobile money operators, it is still low in Malawi. A lot of work needs to be done to address this and open a lot of opportunities in the future. This makes the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative important as it is helping to address some of these issues but more effort is required. For instance, we (pawaPay) organize the FinTech Fridays where we bring our competitors together to discuss industry issues, find synergies and areas of collaboration. More of such is needed to help with capacity building, and fundraising for the players in the industry.”

pawaPay was featured on Day 24 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.