In the ongoing Tekedia Capital Syndicate, we have a startup which built a full-fledged fintech product with banking components entirely within WhatsApp. During our evaluation of this company, two things came to mind:
- WhatsApp is the largest “market” in Africa with close to 700 million African users, and WhatsApp is a potential platform (like Apple App Store, Google/Android Play Store). In other words, while you are building apps for Google Play and Apple App Store, in the near future, you need to have “wapps”* [WhatsApp App] for WhatsApp.
This is a redesign which has a real impact now that feature phones come with WhatsApp. The implication is massive: who needs to pay telcos those USSD and SMS banking fees when banking could be done within WhatsApp for largely free?
Good People, WhatsApp has found a monetization playbook, and it is going to compete in the league of Play Store and App Store. And a huge disintermediation awaits telcos on their SMS, USSD and MoMo-based SMS fees because WhatsApp Banking could abstract those out.
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Couple of months back, it dawned on me that Whatsapp grosses one of the highest numbers of daily users, with people carrying varying degrees of financial transactions. In the near future, a Fintech service will evolve from within the WhatsApp platform itself as a product.
— Leatherman (@Letherman4) October 5, 2023
*Wapps, I made that up
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