Kenyan startup emerges overall winner of Visa competition

Kenyan startup Mookh Africa has been named the overall winner of the Visa Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) Everywhere Initiative.

Mookh won both the “Social Business Payments” challenge as well as the overall prize for its idea taking home Ksh5 million ($50,000).

Likewise, the startup will have the opportunity to work with Visa to develop the concept further.

This is the first time Visa has rolled out its Everywhere Initiative in Sub Saharan Africa with 12 startups eventually selected to compete for cash funding, access to Visa’s products and services, mentorship and support, and exposure to key Visa partners and clients.

The global program is designed to support the company’s goal of fostering the growth of next generation payment technologies.

Mookh Africa developed a social business payments solution which makes it easy for people in Africa to buy and sell on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Innovative ideas

Once the seller creates an online store on Mookh, they can embed it into their Facebook page.

The startup beat 11 other finalists selected from 238 submissions to emerge winners.

“We unanimously decided on the winners. There were very clear, innovative ideas; or ones with phenomenal social impact,” Carmen Whatley, Managing Director Accenture Digital Financial Services and one of the judges, said in a statement.

“All the winners have incredible ideas for Africa — from opening up access to finance for customer to linking up small farmers with financiers — the biggest highlight has been seeing these ideas and their social impact.”

Nigerian layby purchasing platform CredPal won the Merchant Payments challenge, securing Ksh2.5 million ($25,000) in prize money, while another Ksh2.5 million ($25,000) went to Nigerian agricultural investment platform Growsel for winning the Financial Inclusion category.