Digitalization and technological achievements, which have been observed in the African region for the past decade, have sped up the inevitable processes in fintech, changing its landscape completely.

Indeed, we have witnessed new challenges and opportunities for online businesses, related to Covid-19 and as well as the wide range of technological breakthroughs in African fintech.

But what are the key fintech trends and factors, which will affect online business in the nearest future, and what a great role Kenya is going to play in this process?

Digital lending started in 2012 and ignited in 2015 when numerous players emerged in the market.

In the last 2 years, there has been a surge in the number of Kenyan fintechs.

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Due to smartphone penetration, the increase in the number of applications and borrowers as well as the spread of smartphones, which have become the main payment platform even among the elder people and availability of 3G/4G technology network across the country.

Further, the rise of mobile financial services has been promoted by the advent of mobile money that enables users to access cash through their mobile devices.

In Kenya, mobile credit has achieved tremendous success with the market being considered a mature market for mobile financial services-all these factors have led to many positive results, but also to very strong competition in the market.

Financial Inclusion

The microfinance sector deals with an important problem of financial inclusion that has become a genuine concern in recent years.

However, we can’t but agree, that the loans are given not because a borrower simply has a smartphone, but because he or she has some credit history.

But how people can even start building credit profiles?

With the penetration of new vendors to Kenya, which do not use any personal data of a customer, online businesses can mitigate operational risks really well, using advanced technological credit scoring solutions, based on the digital footprint of the device (mobile phone in particular) and add more value to the data no one of their competitors even thought to use and increase the acceptance rate significantly as well as to exclude reputational losses related to severe data breaches and help the customer to start creating its credit history.

At the same time, they obtain a rather heavy competitive advantage and are now able to create more tailored solutions, based on customer needs and user experience.

Using Randomizers

One of the newest and fastest-growing types of online fraud in Kenya is the use of special software, also known as randomizers.

The purpose of such software is to thwart existing digital device fingerprinting technologies and pass off the same device from which the fraudster applies for a loan online as a new one every time.

Fraudsters are using rather sophisticated tools, which do not let the business know if you are dealing with a new potential customer or not.

It is important to have randomization detection technologies and methods for building an effective device ID in order to use it for the risk assessment of each client.

Regulatory Requirements

Credit bureaus in Kenya are highly regulated and we can clearly see that the legislation is continuing to tighten.

The importance of privacy and data protection is growing immensely all over the globe and Africa is no exception.

As a way to compete successfully with traditional financial institutions, it is necessary to consider all changes in legal regulation, particularly regarding the requirements for the processing of personal data.

Digital Credit Providers (DCPs) are regulated by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK). The Regulations ensure the supervision of unregulated DCPs in order to curb discriminatory practices in the credit market.

 DCPs are now required to apply for licenses from the Central Bank of Kenya unlike previously when they only had to register the business name via e-citizen to set up operations in the country.

New Opportunities

The main thing the last few years showed in the context of the fintech industry in Kenya - the new challenges increased the speed of change in a number of areas and set a new bar for business efficiency as a result of investment decline.

The speed of new technologies implementation is becoming one of the main factors of market success.

The organizational set-up of fintech companies and their data-providing and processing policy have to meet these requirements.

Those players who will pay special attention to alternative data solutions will eventually win the market.

Mikhail Marchenko is the Co-Founder of JuicyScore