Will QR Payments Take Off in Ghana or Is Mobile Money King Forever?

What’s happened this Week:

• SA Solar Company Hohm Energy raises $8 million

• African fintech Leatherback enables Rupee remittances for Indian users

• and more!

In The News This Week:

Hohm Energy Raises $8 Million to Scale Adoption of Rooftop Solar across South Africa

Hohm Energy, a South African Climate Fintech company that helps homeowners and businesses to go solar with accredited solar installers, product suppliers, and embedded solar finance, has raised $8 million in a seed round.

African Fintech Leatherback Partners with YES BANK for Indian Rupee Remittances and Payouts

Leatherback, a global banking service provider for individuals and businesses, has entered into a strategic partnership with YES BANK, a leader in India’s private banking sector, to enable easier remittance and Indian Rupee (INR) payouts in India for its users via its tech-driven platform.

Binance Executive “Escapes” Nigerian Custody As Cryptocurrency Dispute Grows

According to Nigerian authorities, an executive of the cryptocurrency firm Binance has escaped from custody in Nigeria after he and another executive were detained last week.

In the rest of the news:

• Calculating The Average Cost Of Starlink In Nigeria

• Viamo Launches Offline Voice Generative AI for Feature and Basic Phones In Ghana

• StarNews and Global Black Economic Forum Launch Business Competition In Nigeria

• Ghana Launches Smart School Project With Distribution Of Smart Tablets To Senior High Schools

• Koa Academy Wins Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) Africa Challenge 2023

• MTN Group Sells Assets In Guinea-Bisseau and Guinea-Conarky As It Exits Those Markets

• South African Billionaire In Talks To Partner With Canal+ To Acquire Multichoice

• ByteDance Shuts Down ‘LetsChat’, Its WhatsApp Clone In Nigeria and Africa

Deep Dive

Is Ghana’s Universal QR Code Payment Platform Losing Momentum Or Just Getting Started? - In 2020, Ghana launched its QR payment platform which would allow customers to pay for items and services using QR codes.

By The Numbers: By current estimations, the GhQR platform has about 130,000 merchants onboarded with a volume of 958,774 transactions as of 2022.

Mobile Money Is Still King - Despite the seeming adoption of QR, many Ghanaians still prefer to use cash or mobile money for their transactions with Mobile money transactions surpassing GHC 1 trillion in 2023

Africa Ecosystem Activity

• African investment firm Heirs Holdings launches innovation-focused arm to back tech startups - Disrupt Africa

• eLearning Africa conference set for Kigali in May - Disrupt Africa

• Tunisia-born Clusterlab raises $600,000 pre-seed funding - Disrupt Africa

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Stat of The Day

According to Statista, Google was the most visited website by Ghanaians, averaging about 52 million visits every month in 2023.

Other popular websites include betting websites and adult video sites.

View more data insights below: