The first virtual Africa Tech Festival took place 09-12 November in a year marked by challenge and change.  As a physical event, taking place in Cape Town each year for more than two decades, the Africa Tech Festival, incorporating AfricaCom, AfricaTech, AHUB, and other co-located events, has always attracted a global audience of digital infrastructure and emerging technology leaders.  In 2020, despite being hosted completely online, it was no different, with registered attendees of over 12 000.

The Liquid Exchange has today announced that it will integrate the 

Ukheshe, Africa’s leading digital fintech platform provider, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Oltio.

Oltio developed the digital payments platform that supports Masterpass, Mastercard’s QR payment service in South Africa and enables people to safely pay for a wide variety of purchases with their bank card by scanning a QR code with their mobile phone.

Mastercard (NYSE: MA) today announced it has completed its acquisition of Finicity, a leading North American provider of real-time access to financial data and insights.

Liquidnet, the global institutional investment network, today announced the appointment of Steven Nichols as Head of NLP (National Language Processing) and Unstructured Data. Additionally, the company has added three new data scientists – Dr. Nicholas Burtch, Dr. Anthony Schramm and Yusong Liu – to its fast-growing team.

IHS Markit today announced the launch of its Sovereign ESG Dataset incorporating 41 discrete indicators across 211 countries and territories. The dataset outputs are numerical for efficient portfolio integration and include forward guidance on a one-year horizon for key Sovereign ESG indicators.

Even before the pandemic, consumer brands were beginning to establish their own online marketplaces as niche alternatives to Amazon and eBay. Why?

Imagine that you’ve bought a new vehiclefrom your favourite car maker. You want to add a ski rack for up top, a bicycle rack on the spare tyre and upgrade the floor mats. Today, you might visit Amazon to find compatible options, which can be incredibly time-consuming because you need to know, and possibly enter, huge amounts of information about your vehicle.

Established in 1846 and renamed in 1970, Nationwide Building Society is now the world’s largest mutual financial institution, with a heritage, culture and ethos that remain unique and built on the solid foundation of mutuality. Despite undergoing significant transformation over the years, Nationwide’s focus has remained constant: providing high-quality customer service and staying committed to its members.

Synthesized, today unveils details of a successful collaboration with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and a leading fraud prevention vendor, aimed at assisting the development of new solutions to detect and prevent fraud and scams exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

PagoFX, the low-cost international money transfer service, is now available in Spain. As the service is open to Spanish residents no matter who they bank with, anyone will have access to PagoFX’s fast and secure international payments. PagoFX is a part of PagoNxt, a new autonomous business created by Banco Santander to bring together its most disruptive payments businesses to compete with global digital payments platforms.