Fintech

Nairobi has been ranked as the most vibrant city in Africa for financial technology (fintech) companies, according to The 2021 Global Fintech Rankings by Findexable.

Nairobi is ranked at position 37 in the Global Fintech Rankings 2021 as the city with the largest fintech ecosystem in Africa and is the only African country in the top 50 Fintech cities.

Rwanda, Ethiopia and Cameroon were also listed among The world’s newest fintech nations.

The city with the largest fintech ecosystem globally is San Francisco in the US, followed by London, New York, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“The San Francisco Bay Area has once again been determined to be the most vibrant city in the world for financial technology (fintech) companies, retaining its rank at the top of the Global Fintech Rankings report for the third year,” The report says.

The Bay Area is home to Silicon Valley.

“We continue to see San Francisco lead the way in the global fintech industry, and we fully anticipate it to do so for many more years to come. The creativity of the technology sector combined with network effects of being in a vibrant, growth-orientated community mean that it is an ideal place for any progressive business, but particularly for fintechs,” Findexable’s founder and CEO Simon Hardie.

The Global Fintech Rankings 2021 report, powered by Mambu, identifies emerging hubs, fintech companies and trends. The Index algorithm ranks the fintech ecosystems of more than 264 cities across 83 countries incorporating data from findexable’s own records and collated and verified by its Global Partnership Network, including Crunchbase, StartupBlink, SEMrush and 60+ fintech associations globally.

According to Elliott Limb, Mambu’s Chief Customer Officer,  Fintech is about turning banking into a background force, a utility.

“This shift is being enabled by platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and banking as a service (BaaS). The players have no boundaries, and this is why it has thrived in San Francisco, where the only boundaries are what you can code.”