African fintech is no longer just about local disruption: a record-breaking ten African fintech companies have been named among the World’s Top 300 Fintech Firms in the 2025 CNBC/Statista rankings, showcasing the continent’s rising influence in global finance.
This recognition reflects a competitive selection based on revenue growth, innovation, customer base expansion, and sector-specific KPIs tracked by Statista alongside editorial oversight from CNBC.
Nigeria’s Fintech Powerhouses
Five Nigerian fintech firms made the 2025 list, dominating within sectors like payments and wealth tech:
- PalmPay: With 35 million registered users, processing up to 15 million transactions daily, this Nigerian super‑app serves as the primary financial account for many unbanked customers.
- Moniepoint: Formerly TeamApt, this fintech handles over 1 billion transactions monthly and raised a $110 million Series C round in October 2024 that vaulted it to unicorn status. Its valuation now exceeds $1 billion.
- OPay: Operating in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, OPay boasts over 50 million users and a $2–2.75 billion valuation. It offers payments, lending, savings, and merchant services and recently reported its first profitable month in 2024.
- Interswitch: A core fintech infrastructure provider in Nigeria and beyond, Interswitch generated $192 million in revenue in the fiscal year to March 2024, ranking it among the fintechs driving regional financial connectivity.
PiggyVest: Known for automated savings tools, PiggyVest supports over 7 million users in Nigeria, making it a standout in the wealth‑tech category (Nairametrics).
Fintech Innovators from Across Africa
Beyond Nigeria, top companies from Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa also earned spots on the list:
- M‑KOPA (Kenya): With a pay‑as‑you‑go model, M‑KOPA has extended over $2 billion in digital credit to 7 million+ users across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Uganda. Its Smart Money Platform supports high-volume, AI‑powered onboarding and repayments (AInvest, M-KOPA).
- Fawry (Egypt): Serving 52.9 million users through over 382,600 POS terminals, Fawry processed transactions worth $9.6 billion in 2024. Its digital wallet services and agent network underpinned strong revenue growth in early 2025 (WeeTracker).
- Paymob (Egypt): Processing payments for 390,000 merchants across Egypt, Pakistan, UAE, and others, this business‑focused payment gateway has quickly become core infrastructure for SMEs in the region (WeeTracker).
Yoco (South Africa): A leading POS provider for small businesses, Yoco has served over 200,000 merchants and raised more than $107 million in funding. It is expanding its reach across sub‑Saharan Africa (WeeTracker).
Why This Recognition Matters
These rankings reflect more than profitability, they stand for financial inclusion in action. Together, African fintechs like Moniepoint, PalmPay, OPay, M‑KOPA, and PiggyVest are building platforms that empower underserved communities with access to credit, savings tools, payments, and investment options. Despite global funding slowdowns, they continue scaling rapidly with African markets in focus.
Moreover, the Financial Times’ 2025 ranking showed fintech dominating Africa’s fastest-growing companies. Nigeria and South Africa led the charge, with firms often rooted in cities like Lagos, which offers immediate local scale albeit amid infrastructure challenges.
Looking Ahead
These fintech leaders are transforming more than transactions, they are tying economic opportunity to innovation. By bridging technology and context, mobile-first models, high-agent touchpoints, or AI-credit scoring, they are charting a path toward inclusive growth and digital sovereignty across the continent.
As global spotlight returns to fintech headwinds, these African innovators show that purpose-driven technology, rooted in local realities, can thrive and lead.
