Assignment 3 - MAA324

Nicolas Kuiper

December 23, 2022

Overview of Okapi Finance
Okapi Finance is a fintech company that provides financial services to un-
derserved communities in Africa. The company was founded by the currentt
CEO, Gisele Mwepu in 2011 and is based in Västerås, Sweden. The com-
pany’s goal is to increase financial inclusion in Africa by providing affordable
and convenient financial products and services to individuals and small busi-
nesses who may not have access to traditional banking institutions.
Okapi offers a range of financial products, including loans, savings ac-
counts, and insurance. The company uses advanced data analytics and
machine learning algorithms to evaluate the creditworthiness of potential
borrowers and to offer personalized loan products. Okapi’s loan products
are designed to be flexible and affordable, with the goal of helping customers
meet their financial needs and achieve their goals by also providing finan-
cial education and training to its customers to help them make informed
financial decisions. These include budgeting and financial planning tools,
as well as educational resources on topics such as financial literacy and en-
trepreneurship. The company has a strong focus on customer service and
works to build long-term relationships with its customers and also works
with local partners, such as banks and mobile network operators, to provide
its financial products and services to a wider audience.
Okapi has received funding from a number of investors, including the
International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Omidyar Network. The
company has also been recognized for its innovative approach to financial
inclusion and has received numerous awards and accolades for its work in
bringing financial services to underserved communities in Africa.

Founder & CEO

Gisele Mwepo, the founder and CEO of Okapi Finance, studied a Masters
degree in Computer Science but because of the IT crash after her studies,
she had a hard time getting a job and decided to continue her studies with
a Civil Engineer degree in Computer Technology at Uppsala University in
Sweden. Unfortunately, she still struggled to find a job within her studied
field and instead adventured herself as an entrepeneur and created her own
company. She later managed to sell 60% of her company and went back
to Congo to visit her family and realised how hard it was to make what
seemed to her very simple financial transactions. When she returned to
Sweden, she set herself the mission to fix these financial issues in Africa and

1
created Okapi Finance; with the goal to “bank the unbanked”.

Okapi’s Mission
Okapi is a financial technology company that promotes sustainability through
its services. Their focus is on supporting agriculture, agribusiness, farming,
and businesses run by women and small traders. Additionally, they work
to provide banking services to those who may not have access to traditional
financial institutions. Their services align with the United Nations Sustain-
able Development Goals, including efforts to protect the environment and
promote economic growth. The key elements of their mission are:

ˆ Why: 80% people in africa are unbanked (financial excluded, no con-

tact with banks).

ˆ How: by providing safe, accessible and affordable financial services.

ˆ What: a state-of-the-art fintech platform.

Risks, Challenges and Opportunities in the Busi-

ness Model
The development of Okapi Finance was extremely challenging as it had
to be extremely safe and match regulations, which took them roughly five
years to build and achieve. Their team had to constantly travel to africa
(mostly Kenya) to study the market and build relationships with banks and
financial institutions. Although they currently have roughly 500k customers,
this was not easy to achieve as any finance-related business involves a lot
of risk from a security perspective; and in this case, more than two million
people send money from EU/EES to Africa (mostly Egypt and Nigeria) on a
daily basis. They were able to achieve this customer count by implementing
their market penetration model which involves a top-to-bottom approach
(e.g. getting a company as a client and all the employees get the salary
through the platform, so all the employees become their clients too).
The uniqueness of Okapi is its stability to move funds domestically and
internationally in real time, with low costs using standard payment technol-
ogy. Meaning instant low-cost transactions using Visa/Mastercard payment
platforms with immediate forex convertibility. This makes the platform
very flexible, portable and scalable; and therefore giving them competitive
advantage with an extremely strong business model.

2
 From a business standpoint, their scalability is one of the key reasons
for their success, as users do not require a bank account or Visa card, and it
can be deployed and used anywhere without prior setup to connect with all
banks involved. Additionally, their solution brings money to Visa through
people that don’t even have bank accounts (unbanked people), even though
it works as a standard banking system without banks involved. In this way,
they have created a financial ecosystem where customers get flexibility to
do what they want and need, and basically everyone involved wins. The
biggest components of their ecosystem are:

ˆ Microfinance/lending module: People can easily access credit for loans

(since, normally, if you have no insurance, you have no credit score)

ˆ Security and compliance: standard payment technology. Complient

against KYC, AML, the EU 5th AML Directive.

ˆ Partnership with banks: built a network with banks for them to indi-
rectly connect with unbanked people.

ˆ Interoperability with Telcos and other actors: most solutions are local,
which slows down the financial process in the whole region. So they
provide a regional solution instead.

Additionally, when expanding into new countries, they use their local part-
ner model. This means that local companies can buy the Okapi Licence to
launch their services in the country (in partnership) with the big advantage
that local business know the environment and culture much better, so less
market penetration is needed and costs are reduced.