Fintech Africa Event 28 July 2015 @ GIBS

Last week I received a call from Graham Fehrsen, Country Manager CFO South Africa and Fintech Africa inviting Afro Leo to attend one of their events next week held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. It looked so interesting that I thought I would share it with you on this blog. The meeting promises "100 insiders, experts, startups and investors" that will discuss developments and challenges for Fintech in Africa.

For those that do not know what "fintech" is, it short for financial technology and is defined by any self respecting Google search as :

"a line of business based on using software to provide financial services. Financial technology companies are generally startups founded with the purpose of disrupting incumbent financial systems and corporations that rely less on software."

According to the The Financial Services Blog it is described as

“...the R&D function of financial services in the digital age….less to do with technology more to do with business model reinvention and customer centric design.  Fintech can be categorised as:

• Traditional fintech as ‘facilitators’ with larger incumbent technology firms supporting the financial services sector; and
• Emergent fintech as ‘disruptors’ with small innovative firms disintermediating incumbent financial services with new technology.”

Basically, it is an industry that probably will revolutionise financial services as we see them today, and to some extent already has. One just has to think how mobile payment systems have changed the way people live and do business, empowering many. Africa is fertile ground for Fintech, perhaps uniquely to the world, because of our needs, our ability to adopt, adapt and even skip innovation cycles and because we tend to be less regulated. As always, I will be interested in hearing what the industry's view on IP is and how they treat it. We have seen IP conflict in this area and this is likely to continue as the industry grows.

Hope to see you there.