Ecobank Group has opened applications for the 2022 edition of its fintech challenge; offering early-stage and established startups the potential to develop new partnerships.
Since 2017, the challenge has sought to generate innovation within Africa’s provision of financial services by encouraging both collaboration and the formation of new, strategic fintech partnerships.
“Ecobank believes that the only way to transform financial services in Africa is for Pan-African banks like Ecobank to continually support and collaborate with innovative fintechs and start-ups,” comments the Bank’s CEO, Ade Ayeyemi.
“We invite and welcome Africa’s best Fintechs to work with us through the 2022 challenge.”
With a prize fund of $50,000 up for grabs, fintechs and developers originating from any of Africa’s 54 countries, as well as global Africa-centred fintechs, are encouraged to enter the challenge.
As well as the cash prize for the top winner, the challenge presents participants with the opportunity to partner and scale their solutions across the 33 African markets in which Ecobank is engaged.
Ten finalists will be inducted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship after the finals and awards ceremony which will take place in October 2022.
Fellows will qualify to explore:
- Multinational products roll out: an opportunity to pursue integration with Ecobank and potentially launch products in all or part of Ecobank’s pan-African 33-country ecosystem.
- Service provider partnerships: Ecobank may select some fintechs as pan-African service partners within the Bank’s ecosystem.
- Access to Ecobank’s Pan-African Banking Sandbox: Fellows will be given access to Ecobank’s APIs to test and improve their products for the pan-African market.
- Priority Access to Ecobank’s Venture Capital partners for funding exploration.
Describing the uniqueness of the challenge, Dr. Tomisin Fashina, the Bank’s operations and technology executive, comments that “it welcomes both early stage and mature start-up fintechs alike and seeks to align them with different kinds of partnership opportunities within Ecobank that match their differing levels of maturity.”
The Ecobank Fintech Challenge was designed in partnership with the international advisory firm, Konfidants and is supported by partners across Africa and globally.
So far 46 Fellows have been admitted into the Ecobank Fintech Fellowship programme since the challenge was launched.
Applications open until 16 September.
Image and article originally from thefintechtimes.com. Read the original article here.