Zeepay is a wholly owned Ghanaian Fintech that started operations in Ghana May 2016. The brand at the time was set up to enable financial inclusion to thrive in Ghana through the use of its fintech rails. Which predominantly leveraged digital assets such as – Mobile Money Wallets, Bank Accounts, VISA Cards and Automated Teller Machines to terminate remittances.
Back in 2016 remittance receivers could only go to Banks’ for cash collection of money transfers from abroad. This process was rather tedious and tiring and often taking days, coupled with the fact that receivers in sub urban and rural has to travel long distances to redeem their transfers.
What makes Zeepay exciting is at the time, the brand introduced a novel idea of enabling remittance senders to send directly to mobile money wallets. Making it the first of kind to do this on a commercial scale as a disruptor under the supervision of the Central bank. For a Regulator that was the first time working with a local fintech to enable such novel innovation.
The brand successfully grew the traffic from about 386 transactions in 2016 to about 2.4million transactions in 2020. This growth has been largely attributed to Zeepay’s aggressive marketing, partnerships and disrupted marketing campaigns.
In 2019 Zeepay was inducted into the Global Brands and awarded the “fastest growing payment service provider”. As evidence of how super outstanding Zeepay is, they were the first non telco and non-bank mobile money license receiver from the Bank of Ghana in March 2020.
This move further cemented Zeepay’s position as the leader in the financial technologies (fintech) industry, as it became the first company in that space to be granted such a licence. The company has grown to become one of the most outstanding brands in Ghana.
How the brand has been sustained?
For every brand to stand the test of time, it must be able to adapt to the ever-changing environment and needs of clients. And it takes a management team with foresight to envision such needs and develop a product or service that will provide solutions. This is exactly what the brains behind Zeepay did.
Speaking to the B&FT in an interview, General Manager, Chief Commercial of Zeepay, Dede Quarshie, said the company evolved in their strategy to become relevant in the market. This was done by tapping into the ever-growing remittance market to drive growth of the company.
“According to GSMA remittance was the fastest growing use case for mobile money, and contributed to about US$3.5billion annually to Ghana. Representing about 5-10% of GDP in Ghana. Considering that we had more mobile money vendors and subscribers compared to banks and bank accounts, we positioned our brand to be the digital distribution platform across Africa.
This strategy paid off nicely as we successfully expanded the business into 10 active markets in Ghana and processed about US$400million in 2020, with a growth rate of 432percent compared to FY20219.
Today Zeepay is the poster child for Fintech in Ghana and Africa and has proved that technology has indeed democratized the world, making it possible for a Ghanaian brand to compete globally with strong brands such as Terra Pay, Thunes and Homesend and dominate the Ghana corridor for digital remittances.
Zeepay is also the first African brand to actually be licensed in the United Kingdom as a money transfer operator and in Ghana as a mobile money operator. Similar to Orange Money, a European brand owned by Orange Telecom France with a money transfer license and in Africa a mobile money one.
We are indeed proud of Zeepay and excited that our hard work has produced a challenger brand that today operates as the only non-telecom and bank mobile money operator alongside the likes of MTN Mobile Money, Vodafone Cash and AirtelTigo Money.
That strategy has, once again, proved fruitful. Since rolling out the platform in May 2016 the company has processed over US$600million and in 2020 processed about US$400million in volume across 10 active markets such Ghana, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, and Nigeria amongst others. And regulated in both the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority and in Ghana by Bank of Ghana.
What makes Zeepay an Outstanding Brand
For General Manager, Commercial, Zeepay is an outstanding brand for basically three reasons – the young vibrant and versatile workforce, and the company’s robust infrastructure, and innovative products and services it keeps introducing.
“First of all, the uniqueness will come from our staff. We are a very diverse group of young people and so we are very agile. And we believe it is one thing that makes us unique. Besides that we also have a very robust and agnostic platform that enables one to convert their existing phone number into a mobile money wallet for financial services.
Making Zeepay the alternative wallet for everyone with either a mobile wallet or bank account held with both the Telco or Commercial Bank. Aside from that, if you look at the industry, we came in with innovation. Our strategy remains in remittance, as we believe that out of a remittance receiver one can also have multiplicity of services such as micro insurance, savings, lending, and investment,” she said.
Looking into the future
As an innovative company and, of course, an outstanding brand, Zeepay said it has started planning for the future already. Ms. Quarshie said the company is positioning itself for global dominance and is currently in partnership with Visa international to deploy visa direct across the continent. This will enable remittance senders to send money to all bank accounts across the continent in real time online mode, while further disrupting the remittance receive sector again.
We believe with the coming into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement, Zeepay is also ready to drive cross border trade and payments with its award winning platform.
Assurance to clients
The General Manager, Commercial assured clients that Zeepay is here to stay. For this reason, it has invested in the first of its kind world class Fintech Campus in Ghana worth over US$2million in Cantonments, further creating employment for over 16,000 agents in 2021.
