Why does a 20-metre walk in Harare clarify the way forward for African fintech? When Juan Seco left Wall Street personal fairness for African tech, he realised the most important hole wasn’t complicated monetary software program—it was what occurs after a remittance arrives. From auditing American Express in New York to constructing JumiaPay and scaling Mukuru’s neobank infrastructure throughout Southern Africa, Seco joins PATHISANI MOYO in our newest version of Coffee With…
A number of days earlier than talking with Juan Seco, Chief Growth Officer and Managing Director for East Africa at Mukuru, a digital monetary companies firm, I discovered myself reflecting on a dialog with my 76-year-old mom.
She lives in Harare; I stay in Johannesburg. Having transferred funds to her by way of Mukuru, I known as to test if the cash had arrived safely. Her response was characteristically direct: “Mntanami (my son), don’t ever send me money through your friends again.”
The funds had landed instantly on her cell phone, permitting her to gather the money in particular person after a quick 20-metre walk. That modest 20-metre stroll captures the core philosophy behind Mukuru’s enlargement much better than any company presentation.
The 20-metre lesson
For the Spanish-born govt, who spent years advising tier-one monetary establishments in New York earlier than relocating to Nairobi, the way forward for African fintech isn’t about crafting hyper-complex monetary devices. It is about eliminating the friction that hinders how folks obtain, retailer, transfer, and spend their cash.
That precept underpins Seco’s definition of South Africa-headquartered Mukuru as a “remittance-led neobank.”
It helps clarify why an organization greatest identified for serving to migrants ship cash dwelling is fast paced into on a regular basis digital monetary companies, from wallets and playing cards to funds and banking infrastructure.
Today, Mukuru operates throughout greater than 60 international locations, serving 17.6 million clients by means of an enormous bodily and digital payout community throughout Southern and East Africa.
Seco’s path to African monetary infrastructure was something however linear. Born in Madrid, he spent his childhood between France and Luxembourg earlier than learning finance and worldwide enterprise at McGill University in Canada.
He started his profession at PwC in Spain, auditing monetary establishments comparable to American Express and Prudential, earlier than transferring to New York to work in private-equity mergers and acquisitions. On paper, it was a textbook company profession; in follow, it was an exhausting routine.
The turning level arrived when Seco and his spouse—a Colombian company lawyer who grew up in Kenya—welcomed a daughter, adopted shortly by twins. Managing three youngsters underneath three alongside two high-powered company careers proved unsustainable.
“We found ourselves working crazy hours with three kids under three,” Seco remembers. His spouse posed a decisive query: “You’ve been unhappy for years doing work you aren’t passionate about. Why not make a change?”
The reply was Nairobi, the Kenya capital metropolis, the place Seco took what he describes as an enormous pay reduce to affix Jumia, Africa’s e-commerce trailblazer. It was a dramatic transfer from the world of New York finance into one in every of Africa’s most bold expertise corporations on the time.
He would spend roughly a decade within the Jumia ecosystem, working throughout expertise, commerce, and monetary companies. It was there that Seco started to see African monetary infrastructure in a different way.
The drawback that modified how he noticed African fintech
As Jumia’s chief monetary officer (CFO), he encountered an issue that seemed mundane however had monumental implications. The firm operated throughout a number of African markets, and clients typically paid in money. Cash-on-delivery was costly and operationally painful. Digital funds, in contrast, may make the enterprise extra environment friendly.
But constructing these fee connections was not easy. The identical expertise crew working throughout quite a few international locations and enterprise strains was repeatedly constructing integrations with totally different mobile-money programs, together with M-Pesa, Kenya’s pioneering cell cash service.
Seco realised Jumia’s drawback was larger than including extra fee integrations. It wanted a layer within the center to attach them. “This is broken. We need something in the middle,” was basically the conclusion he reached.
That pondering helped result in Jumia Pay, the e-commerce firm’s fintech funds platform, and, later, a deeper give attention to monetary expertise.
He noticed comparable issues on the banking aspect. Corporate monetary companies that ought to have been digital nonetheless concerned cumbersome processes. A company card may successfully behave like a pay as you go instrument. Transactions may require bodily interplay with financial institution branches.
For somebody who had spent years uncovered to digital banking in North America, the distinction was putting. The alternative was to not copy the banking programs he had identified elsewhere however to construct across the realities of African customers.
At Jumia Pay, that pondering expanded into lending, together with working-capital merchandise for sellers, buy-now-pay-later integrations, client credit score in Egypt, microloans in Nigeria, and different monetary merchandise designed round transactions already happening on the platform.
From remittances to a “remittance-led neobank”
That lesson adopted him to Mukuru, the place Seco joined in 2023 and located one thing many fintechs spend years making an attempt to construct: belief.
Mukuru had spent twenty years transferring cash throughout borders, incomes the belief of tens of millions of consumers who relied on it to ship cash dwelling. But Seco noticed that the particular person receiving the cash was simply as necessary because the particular person sending it.
Seco observed that folks in international locations comparable to Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana weren’t essentially asking for an advanced new monetary product. They wished the factor they already understood to work higher.
That turned the muse of his thought for a remittance-led neobank, with Mukuru utilizing the belief it has constructed by means of transferring cash throughout borders as the place to begin for a broader monetary relationship with its clients.
“Remittance is the tip of the spear,” Seco mentioned. “It is the first transaction and, in many cases, the first time we have that relationship with the customer. The opportunity is to take that trust and make the customer’s everyday financial life easier.”
According to Seco, remittance is the entry level that provides clients a cause to belief the platform and creates the chance for Mukuru to serve extra of their on a regular basis monetary wants.
Instead of the cash arriving and instantly disappearing into money, it will possibly stay in a pockets. The buyer will pay a invoice, make a purchase order, obtain a wage, ship cash elsewhere, or finally entry different monetary companies.
Seco is cautious to not body Mukuru’s enlargement as merely promoting extra merchandise to present clients. Instead, he desires every new service to suit naturally into how clients already handle their cash and clear up a monetary want they have already got. “They should be an extension or adjacent to what the customer already does,” he mentioned.
Making the cash usable after it arrives
That pondering is changing into more and more seen in Mukuru’s merchandise.
In Botswana, for instance, Mukuru not too long ago launched a bodily Visa debit card linked to its pockets, permitting clients to spend from their pockets stability at retailers and withdraw money from automated teller machines (ATMs). The thought is deceptively easy: cash despatched by a relative abroad can develop into instantly usable cash relatively than one thing that requires one other step earlier than it may be spent.
Seco sees this as the sensible expression of Mukuru’s philosophy of assembly clients the place they’re. “At Mukuru, we always talk about meeting our customers where they are,” he acknowledged.
That means assembly clients wherever they’re, whether or not by means of Mukuru’s agent community, USSD, WhatsApp or more and more by means of digital accounts. This is the place the Bank Zero partnership in South Africa turns into necessary.
Mukuru has partnered with Bank Zero to supply banking infrastructure behind its new account and card providing. Customers can obtain salaries and different funds, make digital funds and use their playing cards for on a regular basis transactions, whereas Mukuru continues to personal the shopper relationship and expertise.
It is a mannequin that is smart for Seco as a result of Mukuru doesn’t need to develop into a standard financial institution in an effort to supply extra banking performance.
Bank Zero offers the underlying banking infrastructure, whereas Mukuru brings the shoppers, distribution, expertise and financial-services expertise.
The partnership is already vital in scale. About 500,000 Mukuru clients are being migrated onto Bank Zero’s infrastructure, contributing to a mixed Bank Zero buyer base of greater than 700,000 finish clients.
The 20-metre philosophy
Seco believes the importance of these numbers lies much less of their scale than in what they permit: clients can transfer from money to digital monetary companies with out having to begin their monetary journey yet again, an necessary shift in markets the place money and digital cash nonetheless coexist.
“Just because someone transacts in cash should not mean they have access to fewer financial services,” Seco defined to TechCabal.
For Seco, success isn’t measured in app downloads or digital card issuances alone, however in making the transition between money and digital worth fully frictionless.
“Just because someone transacts in cash does not mean they should be excluded from formal financial services,” Seco emphasizes. Whether interacting by way of USSD, WhatsApp bots, agent networks, or debit playing cards, Mukuru’s mandate is to satisfy customers inside their present habits.
Which brings the narrative again to a 76-year-old mom in Harare.
For fintech analysts, monetary inclusion is commonly mentioned in summary metrics: regulatory licences, transaction throughput, and API integrations. For a mom gathering her month-to-month assist, it boils right down to one thing much more sensible: the cash arrives safely, predictably, and with out pointless journey.
Her journey was 20 metres. In an business typically obsessive about technological novelty, Juan Seco’s vision for Mukuru proves that essentially the most profound monetary improvements shorten the gap between receiving cash and utilizing it.
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