The outbreak of Covid-19 has forced many businesses to migrate from the manual way of doing things to digital solutions.
Businesses that used to manage their expenses manually using cash or cheques are now using mobile money which ultimately saves time and creates easy tracking mechanisms.
According to Lyn Tukei, the Xente head of marketing and communications, Covid-19 has accelerated the global shift to automated, paperless, and cashless finance processes.
Xente is a Financial Technology company (FinTech) that helps businesses simplify finance by offering automated solutions with a goal to help African businesses get connected to the global economy.
“One of our key features is issuance of visa cards to businesses. They can be either virtual or physical cards. We are actually the first FinTech to issue visa cards in Uganda, through our partnership with Visa,” she says.
Xente also facilitates mobile money disbursements by companies. Tukei says this helps businesses to approve every payment, track every transaction in real-time, manage money across teams, branches, and/or countries, and sync data with their accounting platforms.
“If you have remote teams, instead of going to a mobile money agent, you simply log onto the Xente platform and send money in seconds. It can be mobile money, it can be airtime, it can be any bill,” she says, adding;
“We also help people make bank transfers using Xente. You can pay salaries. You are also able to collect payments from wherever. With this platform, you are able to get statements whenever you do a transaction.”
Tukei, who is enthusiastic about women inclusion in the Tech sector, is happy that the FinTech industry in Uganda is maturing steadily, as seen with more companies opening shop and regulations coming in place.
40 Days 40 FinTechs.
Xente are the 36th participants in this year’s 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative that offers Fintechs useful tools and an introduction to the industry’s emerging technologies, such as Mojaloop Open Source Software, and guidance from Level One Project foundational material. The skills gained from this initiative cover Level One Project Principles, Instant and Inclusive Payment Systems (IIPS), Inclusive Finance and FinTech in general.
Tukei appreciates the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative for profiling different players in the market who are providing unique solutions to various problems in society.
“The initiative has also helped in letting the world know how financial technology can turn around the country and the continent at large,” she says.
HiPipo CEO Innocent Kawooya says this year’s edition is cementing the achievements of the previous editions – where over 60 FinTechs have been transformed – but also building on them to leverage digital financial inclusion in East Africa and beyond.
“Xente is playing a critical role in our migration to a cashless economy. We are also happy to see that big companies like Visa are partnering with local FinTechs to simplify digital payments. This will further make our dream of Including Everyone a reality,” he said.
The #40Days40FinTechs platform is run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa.
The platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products & Services and also share their ideas on how more of us, especially those unserved and underserved by the present financial systems, can be brought into the fold.
Xente: facilitating digital payments for businesses
