Expanding Mobile Financial Services in Africa with Comviva's Willie Ellis | Connecting Africa – YouTube Dictation Transcript & Vocabulary

1.[Music] hi welcome to connecting Africa my name is mat and I'm joined by villy Ellis the VP of sales for conva hi vly Hi how are you I'm good thank you thank you for joining us um I'm going to just start like off quickly why are you at the Africa Tech Festival this year wow um if you're in telecommunications if you're in software and services in Africa you have to be at Africa com ah nice and uh been coming here now for I think about 15 20 years yeah love the place capton is an amazing venue um CTI ICC nice and Central love to come here and conviva has been part of this journey for a long time together with you guys um so yeah I hope to see that continue so then um you you you say that you you've been part of this for for a very long time can you just briefly explain what con conva does especially in 2024 in Africa amazing question thank you very much yeah so firstly conia is a product company yeah we're part of the techmahindra family with the the product team that delivers software for uh telecommunications providers and Enterprises alike um we've been in Africa providing services in uh arranging from our funtech PL platforms to our marketing platforms to our digital BSS platforms and more recently to our reftech platforms so we have a wide variety of products and services that we offer um Africa has been our home for over 20 years now in terms of products and services um been working on the ground with the Telecommunications operators and being very proud to be associated with the leading Talos in Africa um you know we we we we like to believe that we've been a significant part of the growth of the T Telecommunications industry in Africa and also the big uh the big five if I can call it that yeah nice so you mentioned how you you you've been helping and working with the Talos of the the the the of Africa right and most of them have developed very um effective mobile money platforms and I know that you are part you you are part of that for some of it so tell me about how do you see the the fintech ecosystem in Africa currently and what do you foresee is going to is going to continue happening as the US pass great great great question yeah so look I think we all know the challenges that we face in Africa yeah um Bank banking the unbanked digital uh uh um gaps that is has occurred and I think we over time have uh really gotten some experience in terms of focusing on the fintech space yeah so um today um as for the gsma conviva is the largest Mobile Wallet platform on the planet not only on on on the African continent um we are proud to say that we we provide services to the largest Talos on the on in Africa um Airtel orange uh MTN um are all key Associates of ourselves to to address that uh um financial gap um and I think over the next couple of years I think that um will see further growth um double- digit growth in the last couple of years has really driven um the autonomization and democratization of Tech uh units uh within the Talco industry um we've seen you know traditional players like MasterCard and Visa um buying into uh the vision that these Talco companies have we have always shared that vision and we will continue to invest not only on the software side but also on the service side to grow uh together with these Telco companies U for the next for the foreseeable future great um since you're involved in the in the in in the fintech mobile money for like um um um um these Telos right what are your thoughts on on super apps um is it is it okay for a a Telco to have so many things that happen in their one app and do you think that it could be affecting the user experience or do you think hell if you can have all these things in one in one app it it's fine what are your thoughts yeah so super app um I think there's so many misunderstanding in my opinion on what is a super app and why a super app yeah um and I had some interesting conversations over the last two or three days here at Africa with various CMOS Etc and you know if you're go and look at the purpose behind the super app is to consolidate a user relationship with a brand um and I've had it so much I mean even this morning we had a a senior executive saying you know the relationship between a brand why you want to super app is to consolidate that relationship um so I think it's more a user experience the user Journey um that is important in the super app than the individual pieces of features and functionality um we've gone through the journeys of you know what has happened in in the East with regards to uh know the weats of the world and the journey that they followed with their super app framework um we believe in a similar environment where we be become a framework a platform for telecommunications companies to um to host their super AB Vision on um and there's various different opportunities around super app whether you want to consolidate features and functionality consolidate user experiences or just have a destination of of your interface with the customer so we we have built a platform that accommodates any one of those strategic Journeys from a telecommunications company so we do not say where you have to do it how you have to do it but we can give you the option and the platform to provide that yeah lovely lovely talking about giving them the option and the platform um what what are conva um expansion plan brilliant yeah the next somebody told me um 5 years is a long time so I was like oh okay so I'll just I'll just put it out there what are your expansion plans 100% so I think first and foremost still you know Africa is a core anchor uh region for us we want to continue investing in Africa continue to grow in Africa um not only from a u telecommunications perspective but more recently in our Enterprise business I think that there's usuge opportunities to consolidate our presence in Africa and grow that um in the shall we call it short to medium term we have had some successes in Europe now recently um and we would like to kind of continue and cement that that growth in Europe um the Americas is always obviously a massive Market um we've not been that successful there and we have real real focus in the in the short term to to grow our presence there we believe our product site matches the requirements of the US markets um we've had good feedback from from the European customers um and we see that that is a key Focus for us in the in the in the near in the near term thank you so much that was vly Ellis the VP of sales at conva thank you m [Music]