The enza group, a new contender, enters the African payments industry

By Edlyn Cardoza

A team of highly experienced payments industry professionals have launched the enza group (enza), a payments company focused on servicing the growing needs of banks, FinTechs, and MNOs across the African continent.

The African consumer payments landscape remains dominated by cash, with global management consulting firm McKinsey estimating that only 5% to 7% of all payment transactions in Africa are made via electronic or digital channels. As a result, McKinsey anticipates that between 2020 and 2025, the electronic payments market in Africa will grow by around 150%.

enza has been formed to address this rapidly growing market demand and further accelerate cash displacement. The company is spearheaded by Group CEO Hany Fekry and Group COO Hamish Houston, both of whom were instrumental in the growth of the EMP Group, which serviced more than 180 banks across Africa.

“We have had the great advantage of having no legacy technology or processes that we needed to modernise, but rather a blank canvass on which we could architect a modern, third generation payments service built from the first principles to be digital, open, and agile. Agility is not something that can be retrofitted onto legacy systems or operations,” said Hamish Houston, Group COO, enza group.

enza focuses on providing native digital payments capabilities to service institutions that want to enable their customers to accept or make electronic payments, a space that was previously dominated by banks but is increasingly served by MNOs, FinTechs, and government entities. enza’s platform is a token-based, cloud-native, API-first system that is provided with an open development environment that expedites integration and improves technical flexibility.

Hany Fekry, Group CEO, enza group, said, “We have created enza because so many payments challenges remain unsolved across the African continent. Our focus is on creating a seamless digital fabric between the payments’ channels, schemes, integrations etc. so that enza enables clients to access anything they need, even if we don’t provide the service natively.”

The enza team is growing rapidly, with a new corporate office opening in Cairo, Egypt, by the middle of January.

Mark Richards, Chairman, enza group, said, “As a long-term Africaphile, with great enthusiasm for the continued development of the continent, I am very excited to be part of the enza journey, working with colleagues who have a proven track record in building African payments businesses.”