Neobank Archives - International Finance

Velmie and Preferta will offer digital services sans cost and infrastructure limitations: CEO Slava Ivashkin

International Finance Business Desk — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 02:00:26 +0000

Velmie, a digital banking system integrator and delivery partner for regulated fintech programmes, recently announced its role as delivery partner for Preferta, a mobile-first neobank launching in Africa.

The neobank, planned to cover Angola, Mozambique, and Mauritius, will help users to fund a wallet, send money, pay for everyday needs like airtime, and hold balances in multiple currencies.

To know more about the initiative, International Finance caught up with Slava Ivashkin, founder and CEO of Velmie, who spoke in detail about what his company’s partnership with Preferta means for Africa’s digital banking industry, the role Velmie is playing in ensuring the success of Preferta’s mobile-first neobank, and the roadmap the company has prepared for expanding its fintech innovation across the continent.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

What is the vision behind Velmie’s partnership with Preferta, and what does it mean for digital banking in Angola, Mozambique, and Mauritius?
The vision is to establish a modern banking platform that Preferta can use to build a serious regional financial-services business, rather than launch a narrowly defined consumer application. Velmie is the lead technology vendor, providing the platform that will run the core operational processes, and customer experience.

For Angola, Mozambique and Mauritius, the significance is practical: financial institutions can bring well-designed digital services to market without inheriting the cost and limitations of legacy infrastructure.

Each market has its own regulatory and distribution model. So, the platform must combine a common technology foundation with local execution. Done properly, this creates a scalable business for Preferta and broader access to reliable financial services for consumers and businesses.

How is Velmie leveraging its fintech expertise to ensure the success of Preferta’s mobile-first neobank?
Success depends less on launching features than on building a platform that performs reliably as volumes and regulatory expectations grow. Velmie has spent more than a decade developing and operating banking technology, including projects across Africa serving multi-million customer bases.

ALSO READ | Visa, M-Pesa pick Congo as testing ground for stablecoin-driven cross-border payments

That experience shapes the work with Preferta from the outset. We are bringing a proven architecture, established operational controls and delivery discipline, while adapting the implementation to the realities of each market.

The result should be a neobank that feels simple to the customer but is institutionally robust behind the interface. That balance is essential. Mobile-first must never mean technology-light or control-light.

What does Velmie’s roadmap for expanding fintech innovation across Africa look like?
Our roadmap is driven by client demand and the maturity of individual markets, not by expansion for its own sake. We will continue to deepen our presence in countries where regulated institutions and ambitious fintechs need modern banking infrastructure, while strengthening the regional capabilities of the platform.

The priority is to help clients launch faster, operate more efficiently, and expand without replacing their technology every time the business model evolves.

That means staying close to regulatory change, building integrations with local financial ecosystems, and maintaining a platform that can support both domestic growth and regional expansion. Africa is not one market, and our roadmap reflects that. The technology must be global in standard and local in execution.

How have Velmie’s white-label banking and wallet solutions contributed to financial inclusion in Africa?
Financial inclusion is ultimately a distribution and economics problem. A digital account has limited value if the customer cannot access it through the channels available in daily life, or if the cost to serve is too high. Velmie’s platform was designed with those realities in mind.

It supports models such as USSD access and agent-assisted banking, which remain important beyond major urban centres, while giving providers the ability to offer payments, savings and credit services on the same technology foundation.

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This allows our clients to reach customers who may be outside the traditional branch model without creating a second-class banking experience. The contribution is not a single feature. It is the ability to make inclusive services operationally sustainable at scale.

What sets Velmie’s fintech platform apart from other providers in the African market?
Velmie combines the reach of a global technology company with a clear understanding of African operating models. We serve clients across four continents. Our customers benefit from technology and practices proven in different regulatory and commercial environments. At the same time, we do not treat Africa as a simplified version of another market. The platform accommodates the distribution methods, payment rails and operating constraints that matter locally.

The other distinction is ambition. We are not supplying software simply to preserve an existing model. We provide a platform that allows institutions to grow into larger, more sophisticated businesses without changing their core technology. That is what clients should expect from a top-tier banking technology partner.

How does Velmie plan to capitalise on Africa’s rapidly growing fintech opportunity?
We see the opportunity in Africa as a long-term institutional market, not a short-term fintech cycle. Our approach is to work with regulated banks, financial institutions, and credible fintech operators that have a clear path to scale. We will invest where we can bring repeatable technology, strong delivery capability and measurable operating value.

Partnerships will remain important, particularly where local payment networks, compliance providers, and distribution channels determine how quickly a proposition can reach the market.

ALSO READ | Lumin Soft becomes third company to join Egypt’s fintech regulatory sandbox

The objective is disciplined growth: establish strong reference clients, deepen the platform’s regional capabilities, and use that foundation to support expansion across neighbouring markets. The winners will be the companies that combine local relevance with institutional-grade execution.

How does Velmie plan to support Mauritius’ National Fintech Strategy 2026-2030?
Mauritius has an opportunity to become more than a successful domestic financial centre. It can serve as a trusted base for digital financial services connecting Africa with international markets. Velmie can support that ambition by giving banks and fintechs the technology foundation to move from pilots to regulated, scalable operations.

Our role is practical: resilient banking infrastructure, secure digital channels, and the ability to integrate with local and cross-border ecosystems. We also see value in working with local institutions and talent so that capability remains in the market rather than being imported project by project.

This is closely aligned with the strategy’s focus on sound regulation, digital resilience, skills, innovation and inclusion. The measure of success will be whether Mauritius produces financial platforms that can compete beyond its borders.

What are the biggest challenges facing Africa’s fintech ecosystem today, and how can they be addressed?
The central challenge is fragmentation. Regulation, payment infrastructure, identity systems, and distribution economics differ materially between markets. That makes regional scale harder and often encourages companies to build around short-term constraints rather than a durable operating model. The answer is not to force uniformity.

It is to create stronger common standards, improve interoperability, and give regulated institutions technology that can adapt without becoming a bespoke system in every country.

Trust is equally important. Customers and regulators will only support digital finance when resilience, data protection, and financial controls are built into the operating model from the start. Africa has no shortage of demand or entrepreneurial talent.

The next phase requires more institutional depth: stronger infrastructure, disciplined governance, and partnerships capable of supporting scale.

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Kenyan digital banking startup Kwara raises $4mn to build a neobank

IFM Correspondent — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 10:10:43 +0000

Kenyan digital banking startup Kwara has raised $4 million to build a neobank that will help bring modern financial services to millions of people by developing credit unions in emerging markets, according to media reports. The funding round was led by Breega VC along with participation from SoftBank Vision Fund Emerge, New General Market Partners, Finca Ventures, Globivest, and Do Good Invest. Other investors are Launch Africa, Rabacap, Future Africa, Norrsken Impact Accelerator, DOB Equity, Samurai Incubate, and fintech angels.

Founded in 2018 by Cynthia Wandia and David Hwan, Kwara has built a digital banking platform that is primarily designed to help the unbanked and underbanked people to help build wealth in a frictionless way. The company also offers a management platform that helps drive efficacy and automation at the cooperative staff level.

Kwara also connects the savings cooperatives with banks, payment gateways and other third parties by utilising an open API. All these features come in one software-as-a-service package and it lets cooperative clients pay for their usage and get a single end-to-end solution.

Kwara CEO Cynthia Wandia told the media, “We are building a solution for people – an estimated one billion – who do not currently have access to personalised banking services. This is the result of a gap in banking-grade technology and the lack of neobank-like experiences for the end clients. We’ve been thrilled to see the excitement around the Kwara brand among credit unions and their members, which is fast becoming synonymous with a superior user experience and the future of banking. Thanks to our investors, we will now be able to offer an end-client experience that is 100 times better than what they previously had access to.”

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YouTrip raises $30 mn for B2B payments to expand its business

IFM Correspondent — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 09:15:48 +0000

Singapore-based neobank YouTrip has raised $30 million in a recent Series A funding and will use it to enhance its B2B payments along with expanding its business further in Southeast Asian markets, according to media reports. The company plans to launch a B2B payments ecosystem by launching a corporate credit card named YouBiz. This card will have higher spending limits and will also provide best exchange rates in more than 150 currencies.

YouBiz will be launched in Singapore during the first quarter of 2022, and also plans to introduce its services to at least five other Southeast Asian countries by next year.

Launched in 2018, YouTrip is a multi-currency payments app and a prepaid MasterCard that helps frequent travellers. Currently, the company has its presence in Singapore and Thailand. The firm has also released that it has witnessed strong growth with more than 1.5 million app downloads and over $800 million in spending processed. The firm also added that with strong cross-border e-commerce payments, along with return of travel spending post Covid-19, the company has seen solid growth.

Arthur Mak, co-founder, YouTrip, told the media, “We’re very excited about the B2B payments opportunity. It is a segment with a deep market, as companies increasingly operate in a distributed and borderless manner and we expect their cross-border payment needs to go up. By incorporating our company’s core strengths of offering the best exchange rates and an extremely easy to use interface into YouBiz, we help businesses save time and cost, so that they can focus their energy and efforts in finding growth.”

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UNObank and Tonik receive digital banking licenses in the Philippines

International Finance Business Desk — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 07:39:11 +0000

UNObank and Tonik recently had their application approved by the Central Bank of Philippines to operate as a digital bank in the country and they aim to bridge the gap of financial inclusion in Southeast Asia and eventually South Asia. UNObank will see Manish Bhai as the CEO, who is also a career banker and tech entrepreneur.

Bhai told the media, “The BSP’s vision and foresight to digitize the local banking industry is future-forward and apt, because ultimately it will help align the Philippines as a modern banking center for the region. We are very grateful to the BSP and honoured by the trust placed in our team. Long term, our goal is to bridge the gap to financial inclusion. With UNObank, we are building the first full-spectrum digital bank to service those with unmet financial needs in Southeast and South Asia”.

UNObank is currently working with cloud banking provider Mambu and Amazon Web Services for their rollout in the country.

On the other hand, Tonik, which is the first digital-only neobank in the country has also acquired a digital license. Prior to this, the neobank was granted a license to operate as a rural bank in the Philippines in 2019.

Greg Krasnov, CEO of Tonik mentioned that securing a digital license was one of the highly anticipated milestones for the company and it will help strengthen their foothold in the neobanking space by speeding up the rollout of their payment products and additional lending.

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Revolut introduces bitcoin, ether trading for US customers

Pritam Bordoloi — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:33:13 +0000

UK-based neobank Revolut is adding cryptocurrency trading to its platform, accessible by its clients in the United States. Revolut now allows the trading o cryptos such as bitcoin and ether.

In order to launch the new service, Revolut has partnered with New York0based trust company Paxos, the media reported.

Revolut’s users in the US can now buy, hold, and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum from the Revolut app.

Reportedly, the new feature will be available to Revolut users in 49 states across the US expect Tennessee, where it faces some regulatory issues.

Users will also be able to convert bitcoin and ethereum among 28 global currencies, with Revolut planning to bring more cryptos under its umbrella in the future.

In Europe, Revolut supports litecoin, bitcoin cash and XRP. The company charges 2.5 percent for every crypto transaction that standard customers make and 1.5 percent from its premium costumers.

Reportedly, Revolut is waiving its fees for the first 30 days.

The neobank made its entry into the US market earlier in March. In the future, it plans to expand in Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan and Australia.

Revolut chief Edward Cooper told the media, “We’ll launch the core product first and then see what steps we need to make to launch the crypto product. We’ll probably be fastest to market in the Australian market, so I’d imagine Crypto Australia is next.”

Earlier this year, the neobank secured around $500 million from investors such as venture capital firm TCV and its existing investors were Ribbit Capital, DST Global, Lakestar and GP Bullhound to fuel its expansion plans.

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