In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with Catherine Karimi Gichunge, a member of the original M-Pesa team, for a deep dive into the untold story of how Africa's most iconic fintech was really built.
The M-Pesa story is often told like a myth, a brilliant innovation that grew "organically" into a billion-dollar behemoth. But this narrative skips the most important part: the messy, unglamorous, and deliberate work that made it all possible.
This conversation begins with a surprising revelation: M-Pesa was never intended to be a "send money home" service. It was born from a pilot project to solve a specific problem for a microfinance institutions: the risk and inefficiency of disbursingcash loans. It was only by observing how a small group of women in the pilot started using the system; storing value on their SIM cards and sending money to each other that the team discovered the product's true, world-changing potential.
This is a masterclass in building something real, one user and one agent at a time, covering the four-year pilot before the 2007 launch , the reality of walking kilometers with a laptop to set up a single agent , and the complex financial architecture that makes the magic work behind the scenes.
● The true origin story of M-Pesa asa microfinance loan disbursement tool, not a P2P payment service.
● How the "Send Money Home" phenomenon was discovered by observing unexpected user behavior during the pilot phase.
● The on-the-ground reality: launching with only 35 inactive agents and using guerrilla marketing tactics to drive initial adoption.
● The secret financial architecturethat makes M-Pesa work: understanding the critical roles of the control account, working capital, float, and commission accounts.
● How real-world problems led to innovation, like the creation of the aggregator and super agent models to solvecommission payment and liquidity challenges.
● An expert take on why Kenya becamea mobile money market while Nigeria became a bank-led payments market."I had to walk from Muranga Road to Haile Selassie on foot, set up another agent. People do not know these things. They say it is organic growth. It is not."
Key Quote:
"I had to walk from Muranga Road to Haile Selassie on foot, set up another agent. People do not know these things.They say it is organic growth. It is not."
Key Quote:
What if sending money across the world was as simple, free, and instant as making a phone call? In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with Mike Hudack, CEO of Sling, to discuss how his company is using stablecoins and blockchain technology to build a global,social financial network that moves beyond the friction of traditional banking.
Topics covered include:
● The future of money is on-chain and borderless
● The "terrifying" crypto transfer that sparked the idea for Sling
● Building a "directory" to solve the anxiety of sending to anonymous wallet addresses
● The core difference between traditional financial rails and a shared blockchain ledger
● How to build a sustainable business model on free peer-to-peer transfers
● Navigating global regulation and differentiating utility from the "crypto casino"
For anyone curious about the real-world application of stablecoins and the future of cross-border payments, this conversation provides a clear vision of what's next.
What does it really take to build a lending business that can attract millions in institutional debt in Africa? In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with credit experts AJ Davidson (Sixpoint Capital) and Aum Thacker (TLG Capital) to lay out the practical playbook of do's, don'ts, and non-negotiables.
Topics covered include:
● Why your lending model needs built-in enforceability to survive.
● The investor mindset: Why credit funds care about principal protection, not your unicorn valuation.
● The "Do's and Don'ts" of founder DNA and team composition.
● How to build your tech stack for securitization from day one.
● Navigating regulatory roadblocks and currency risk across the continent.
● A simple breakdown of securitization and how it unlocks massive scale For fintech builders and investors seeking to understand the mechanics of private credit, this episode offers a clear, no-nonsense guide to what it takes to get funded and build to last.
What does it take to build a digital bank that truly solves the problems of small businesses in Africa? In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with Rinse Jacobs, CEO of Zazu, a neobank moving beyond the account and card to build the foundational financial hub for Africa's entrepreneurs.
Topics covered include:
● Why traditional banking consistently fails the modern SME;
● The "rebundling"strategy vs. the single-product fintech wedge;
● Combining incorporation, banking, and bookkeeping into one seamless workflow;
● Why transparent subscriptions build more trust than complex hidden fees;
● Using AI to create a"CFO-in-your-pocket" for founders;
● The blueprint for a Pan-African business banking network;
For fintech builders, investors, and entrepreneurs seeking to understand the future of SME banking, this episode offers a clear playbook on building a platform that goes beyond the basics.
What does it take to build an enterprise-grade cross-border payments platform across Africa? In this episode, Samora Kariuki sits down with Ola Oyetayo, CEO of Verto—a licensed B2B payments platform moving billions monthly with corridor-level precision.
Topics covered include:
FX liquidity gaps and price discovery across African markets
Why compliance is a growth enabler, not a bottleneck
The operational discipline required to build trust in high-risk corridors
Where stablecoins fit in (and where they don’t)
The future of local currency convertibility and overlooked markets like the DRC
For fintech builders, investors, and policymakers seeking clarity on what real infrastructure looks like beyond the hype, this episode offers a rare, licensed view from the inside.
What happens when one of Africa’s top engineers sets out to rebuild a fintech and mobility platform—this time using AI?
In this episode of the F-Squared Podcast, Samora Kariuki sits down with Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO of Little, to unpack how he’s applying LLMs, voice commands, and platform-first thinking to transform the next phase of African digital infrastructure. This is a deep dive into technical decisions, architectural trade-offs, and why Kamal believes voice—not buttons—is the future interface for fintech and mobility.
🎙 Guest Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO @ Little Builder of systems used by banks, telcos, and now millions of users across Africa.
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M-Shwari scaled to 15 million users in 41 days. Fuliza became a verb. Now, Eric Muriuki is building Loop DFS into the Stripe of Africa.
In this episode of F-Squared, Samora Kariuki goes deep with one of Africa’s most experienced digital finance leaders. They unpack:
The legal architecture behind M-Pesa’s rise
What went wrong—and right—with M-Shwari’s launch
How Fuliza went from pitch to cultural phenomenon
Loop’s pivot from neobank to fintech infrastructure play
Why AI-first hiring might be the future
The case for fintech as Kenya’s next big export industry
No fluff. Just timeless lessons from the person who’s built the most successful digital finance products in Africa.
In this episode, I sit down with Obi Emeratom, the founder and CEO of Zone, to explore how his company is rebuilding the core infrastructure of African payments using a regulated, blockchain-based architecture.
We unpack:
The journey from Appzone to Zone and why the spin-off was necessary
How Zone won over Nigerian banks without evangelizing crypto
What makes regulated blockchains credible to central banks
Why decentralization with permissioning may be the right model for Africa
The real-world bottlenecks of legacy switches and how Zone bypasses them
Zone Pay, deep linking, merchant wallets, and the next wave of use cases
Why Obi believes the future of payments is regulated DeFi built from the ground up
This is not a theoretical chat t’s a grounded look at the friction in today’s systems and a pragmatic blueprint for what comes next.
🎧 Listen in if you care about the evolution of African fintech infrastructure, cross-border payments, and compliance-aligned innovation.
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The Collison brothers called stablecoins “superconductors” for finance. But how much of that is real in Africa today?
In this F-Squared episode, Samora talks to Eytan Messika (Nilos) and Nicolai Eddy (Nala & Rafiki) about:
The limits of correspondent banking
Why stablecoins matter for FX and remittances
The regulatory gray zones—and why they persist
Real-world use cases: imports, treasury, and more
South Africa’s payments scene looks “solved” from the outside—until you try to wire money 50 times a day from your phone. In this candid conversation, Kiaan Pillay, CEO & co-founder of Stitch, sits down with Samora Kariuki to unpack how a scrappy side-project became the enterprise payments partner for Binance, Vodacom, Foschini Group, and more.
You’ll hear:
The origin story: screen-scraping bank portals to automate payouts and stumbling onto Africa’s “Plaid moment.”
Why enterprises cared—and the overlooked gaps in settlement, reconciliation, and fraud data that incumbents ignored.
Pivot lessons: off-boarding SMEs, doubling down on high-touch service, and hiring engineers as 24/7 support.
Capitec Pay, PayShap & mobile money—what’s really driving South Africa’s rapid shift to pay-by-bank rails.
The Binance baptism: how one high-risk client forced Stitch to mature overnight.
Enterprise sales realities: slow, lumpy, but worth the step-change in volume.
Advice for founders: make people say no, protect culture, and learn to be impatient and patient at once.
In this engaging episode of the Frontier Fintech podcast, host Samora Kariuki sits down with Ngozi Dozie, co-founder of Carbon, to unpack the untapped potential of Nigeria’s lending market. Despite Nigeria’s status as one of Africa’s largest economies, only 2–5% of its population accessed loans annually a decade ago. Ngozi reveals how Carbon seized this opportunity, starting with paper-based salary loans and evolving into a digital-first platform, revolutionizing consumer and SME finance in a market long dominated by risk-averse banks.
Ngozi shares the gritty details of Carbon’s journey, from its origins in debt collection to leveraging Nigeria’s rising smartphone penetration and payment infrastructure for its Paylater product. He discusses the power of proprietary credit scoring, which maintained a 10–13% loss rate through economic crises, and the hard lessons learned during COVID-19, when reactive decisions strained customer trust. With candor, Ngozi reflects on the complexities of transitioning to full-service banking and the strategic pivot to SME banking, driven by the insight that 50% of their retail borrowers were small business owners.
Looking ahead, Ngozi envisions Carbon as a “superpower” for customers, using AI and automation to solve not just financial but operational challenges for SMEs. From AI-powered cash flow tools to personalized advisory services, Carbon aims to redefine banking by addressing the “why” behind financial needs. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for fintech innovators, entrepreneurs, and anyone curious about building trust and value in one of Africa’s most dynamic markets.
70% of digital transformations in banks fail. The odds are even worse when you're pivoting from a niche corporate bank to a universal, tech-driven institution. But I&M Bank has bucked the trend.
In this episode, we sit down with Shameer Patel, Executive General Manager of Retail and Business Banking at I&M Bank. Shameer was instrumental in architecting I&M’s transformation—first from the CEO’s office, where he led strategy, and now at the helm of its fast-growing retail arm.
