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 largest 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 reside in Johannesburg. Having transferred funds to her through Mukuru, I referred to 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 immediately on her cell phone, permitting her to gather the money in particular person after a short 20-metre walk. That modest 20-metre stroll captures the core philosophy behind Mukuru’s growth 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 just 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 finest recognized for helping migrants send money home 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 nations, serving 17.6 million prospects via an unlimited 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 reminiscent of 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 observe, 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 rapidly by twins. Managing three kids underneath three alongside two high-powered company careers proved unsustainable.
“We found ourselves working crazy hours with three kids under three,” Seco recollects. 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 minimize to affix Jumia, Africa’s e-commerce trailblazer. It was a dramatic transfer from the world of New York finance into one in all Africa’s most formidable expertise firms 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 another way.
The downside that modified how he noticed African fintech
As Jumia’s chief monetary officer (CFO), he encountered an issue that appeared mundane however had monumental implications. The firm operated throughout a number of African markets, and prospects typically paid in money. Cash-on-delivery was costly and operationally painful. Digital funds, against this, might make the enterprise extra environment friendly.
But constructing these fee connections was not easy. The identical expertise staff working throughout quite a few nations and enterprise traces was repeatedly constructing integrations with completely different mobile-money techniques, together with M-Pesa, Kenya’s pioneering cellular cash service.
Seco realised Jumia’s downside was greater 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 primarily the conclusion he reached.
That thinking helped lead to Jumia Pay, the e-commerce firm’s fintech funds platform, and, later, a deeper deal with monetary expertise.
He noticed comparable issues on the banking facet. Corporate monetary companies that ought to have been digital nonetheless concerned cumbersome processes. A company card might successfully behave like a pay as you go instrument. Transactions might require bodily interplay with financial institution branches.
For somebody who had spent years uncovered to digital banking in North America, the distinction was placing. The alternative was to not copy the banking techniques he had recognized elsewhere however to construct across the realities of African shoppers.
At Jumia Pay, that pondering expanded into lending, together with working-capital merchandise for sellers, buy-now-pay-later integrations, shopper credit score in Egypt, microloans in Nigeria, and different monetary merchandise designed round transactions already going down on the platform.
From remittances to a “remittance-led neobank”
That lesson adopted him to Mukuru, where Seco joined in 2023 and located one thing many fintechs spend years attempting to construct: belief.
Mukuru had spent 20 years shifting cash throughout borders, incomes the belief of hundreds of thousands of shoppers who relied on it to ship cash residence. But Seco noticed that the particular person receiving the cash was simply as essential because the particular person sending it.
Seco seen that folks in nations reminiscent of Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Botswana weren’t essentially asking for an advanced new monetary product. They needed the factor they already understood to work higher.
That grew to become the muse of his thought for a remittance-led neobank, with Mukuru utilizing the belief it has constructed via shifting cash throughout borders as the start line for a broader monetary relationship with its prospects.
“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 prospects a purpose 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 could actually stay in a pockets. The buyer pays 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 growth as merely promoting extra merchandise to present prospects. Instead, he needs every new service to suit naturally into how prospects already handle their cash and remedy 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 recently launched a physical Visa debit card linked to its pockets, permitting prospects to spend from their pockets steadiness 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 quite 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 prospects the place they’re. “At Mukuru, we always talk about meeting our customers where they are,” he said.
That means assembly prospects wherever they’re, whether or not via Mukuru’s agent community, USSD, WhatsApp or more and more via digital accounts. This is the place the Bank Zero partnership in South Africa turns into essential.
Mukuru has partnered with Bank Zero to offer 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 client relationship and expertise.
It is a mannequin that is smart for Seco as a result of Mukuru doesn’t must develop into a conventional financial institution with a purpose to provide extra banking performance.
Bank Zero offers the underlying banking infrastructure, whereas Mukuru brings the purchasers, distribution, expertise and financial-services expertise.
The partnership is already vital in scale. About 500,000 Mukuru prospects are being migrated onto Bank Zero’s infrastructure, contributing to a mixed Bank Zero buyer base of greater than 700,000 finish prospects.
The 20-metre philosophy
Seco believes the importance of these numbers lies much less of their scale than in what they allow: prospects can transfer from money to digital monetary companies with out having to begin their monetary journey yet again, an essential 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 just 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 through USSD, WhatsApp bots, agent networks, or debit playing cards, Mukuru’s mandate is to fulfill shoppers 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 accumulating her month-to-month help, it boils all the way down to one thing much more sensible: the cash arrives safely, predictably, and with out pointless journey.
Her journey was 20 metres. In an trade typically obsessive about technological novelty, Juan Seco’s vision for Mukuru proves that probably the most profound monetary improvements shorten the gap between receiving cash and utilizing it.
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