Xolane Ndhlovu’s DafriBank set to eclipse Interswitch, Opay others

Since it went live in July 2021, DafriBank Digital Limited continues to blaze the trail of the digital economy in Africa, amidst growing acknowledgement of its status as a model unicorn startup.

The financial technology company, the largest digital entrepreneurs focused bank in Africa, is a flagship brand of the DafriGroup PLC, a public company founded by South African billionaire Ziggy Xolane Ndhlovu.

Incorporated in South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Comoros Island and the UK, DafriBank Digital has, in its first three months of operation, covered significant mileages, including the historic offer of its stocks as digital share on October 12.

The bank, one of the newest addition to Ziggy Xolene Ndhlovu’s 21-subsidiary hegemon, DafriGroup Group, has in three months recorded positive statistics that included 350 merchants signed up onto its API, 23, 590 active users and 10,000,000 of its digital currency, $DBA, in circulation.

As predicted by Ndhlovu a few months back, given its broad market segment which includes 50 African countries, the bank is set to dominate Africa’s fintech sector and overshadow the likes of Interswitch, Opay, Flutterwave, Andela and others.

“We are heading to a cashless society where bricks and mortar bank branches will be absolute and DafriBank Digital wants to be in the forefront of this development,” Ndhlovu had posted on his Instagram page, @xolanendhlovu, on August 23. “We became the first bank to offer a built-in merchant API which allows businesses of all sizes to instantly accept payments on their websites from anywhere in the world in their local currencies. If we can do these in less than a year, imagine what we could do in 10 years?”

In the wake of its latest strides, the bank has been on a partnership spree with several financial institutions including among others, one of the biggest commercial banks in Nigeria seeking to co-brand and offer MasterCard credit & Debit cards that will be spendable on a global scale, and Circle, a global financial technology firm that is the issuer of the second-largest stable coin USDC.

Summing up DafriBank’s rash of achievements, its managing director, Catherine Anajemba, had concluded thus: “For a barely three months platform to attract the attention of global renewed firms is an indication that we are destined for greater things.”