F-Squared Podcast

Frontier Fintech is a podcast about the business of fintech in Africa. We speak with founders, executives, investors, and regulators who are shaping financial services across the continent—helping you connect the dots in Pan-African fintech.

F-Squared Podcast is a technology podcast hosted by Frontier Fintech, with 28 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Frontier Fintech hosts F-Squared Podcast, a technology show with 28 episodes published.

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  F-Squared Podcast

  KSh25 Billion a Month: Kenya’s New Digital Credit Frontier, with Kevin Mutiso

  Jul 30, 20261h 14m

  Kenya has broad financial access and a rapidly expanding digital-credit market, yet only a small minority of adults are financially healthy. Kevin Mutiso, Chairman of the Digital Financial Services Association of Kenya, explains how 2022 regulation unlocked capital, larger loan sizes and specialist lending for traders and boda-boda operators. Samora and Kevin examine the long tail beyond Fuliza and M-Shwari, the data-sharing challenge behind over-indebtedness, and whether digital lenders can help borrowers graduate from short-term liquidity to growth capital.

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  F-Squared Podcast

  Paga's Tayo Oviosu: Why You Can't Bank a Billion People by Building a Bank

  Jun 18, 20261h 2m

  In 2009, Tayo Oviosu printed a 300-page regulatory application, packed it into a suitcase, and carried it to Abuja because Nigeria had no framework for mobile payments and someone had to ask the Central Bank to write one. Seventeen years later, the lesson he draws is the one most fintech founders still resist: you cannot bank a billion people by building a bank. You bank them by building the infrastructure other people build on. Tayo is the founder and CEO of Paga, one of Nigeria's earliest and most enduring fintech companies, founded when M-Pesa was barely two years old. This conversation is a masterclass in strategic discipline; what Paga chose not to build, and why that restraint is the reason it is still standing. We get into the real economics of agent banking (why roughly 80% of Nigerian agent transactions are cash withdrawals, and what that does to financial-inclusion timelines), why Paga stayed out of the card-gateway war when Paystack and Flutterwave emerged, the AWS/Netflix analogy behind Paga Engine, the Doroki thesis that African retailers need an operating system before they can be banked, and Paga's move into US rails. Through naira devaluations, funding droughts, and the rise of OPay and PalmPay, Paga stayed solvent and stayed focused. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 10:00 - The suitcase of binders: cold-calling the CBN in 2009 24:00 - Why Paga stayed out of the card-gateway market 33:00 - The 20-year business: real economics of agent banking 40:00 - "You cannot bank a billion people by building a bank" — the Paga Engine thesis 44:00 - The Doroki thesis: an operating system for African retailers 47:00 - US rails and hosted dollar accounts (Swift, ACH, Fedwire) 51:00 - Three hours to twelve seconds: reconciliation with Claude Code Pinned quote "Revenue is vanity; gross profit pays the bills. We taught our team that everyone acts like an owner and negotiates the best deal for everything, from marketing to supplies." - Tayo Oviosu Connect with Tayo & Paga Tayo Oviosu (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/oviosu/ Paga:https://www.mypaga.com/ Doroki: https://doroki.com/

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  F-Squared Podcast

  Africa Doesn't Have a Dollar Problem. It Has a Plumbing Problem.

  Apr 29, 20261h 1mS0

  <p>African traders earn in Europe and pay in China. Stablecoins are finally solving that triangular liquidity gap — and reshaping how Africa-Asia trade finance works.</p><p><br></p><p>April Long spent thirteen years inside corridor banking — Standard Chartered, Gulf African Bank, and the Africa-Asia fintech ecosystem. She watched the cost of stablecoin liquidity fall from unworkable to roughly 50 basis points round-trip. This episode is her structural explanation of why that shift matters more than most people in African trade finance currently understand.</p><p><br></p><p>“Money needs to flow in a triangular structure — receiving from Europe, paying t...

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  F-Squared Podcast

  Building the Rails for African Trade: Inside Onafriq | Dare Okoudjou

  Apr 15, 20261h 21mS0

  <p>Africa's mobile money networks have over 800 million registered accounts spread across dozens of closed loops. Moving money between them; across borders, currencies, and regulatory jurisdictions, remains the unfinished infrastructure project of a generation. Onafriq was built on the thesis that someone had to connect the dots.</p><p>Samora Kariuki sits down with Dare Okoudjou, founder and CEO of Onafriq (formerly MFS Africa), the Pan-African payment network that connects mobile money wallets, bank accounts, cards, and now stablecoin rails across 40+ countries. Dare's path is unusual: an engineer who trained at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Paris, helped architect MTN Mobile Money across...

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  F-Squared Podcast

  Building Infrastructure That Puts You in Control of Your Money | Farzam Ehsani, Valr

  Apr 1, 202659 minS0

  <p>Valr is Africa's largest crypto exchange by volume, but the business has evolved well beyond exchange. Under founder Farzam Ehsani, Valr now provides modular on-chain financial infrastructure that banks and telcos plug into to offer their own customers crypto exposure, stablecoin savings, tokenised assets, and cross-border settlement. In a sector where reputational risk is the norm, the word that keeps coming up around Valr is "respect."</p><p>Farzam's path to building it has been circuitous. His family are Bahá'ís of Persian origin who were persecuted in Iran and settled in Nairobi in 1975. He grew up in We...

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