NowNow Joins Mastercard to Scale Financial Innovation in Africa

Emma Okonji

Africa’s fast-growing fintech and digital banking startup, NowNowDigital Systems, has been selected to participate in the Mastercard Start Path Global program, created to help later-stage startups innovate and scale. Recognized as an emerging leader in Africa’s fintech sector, NowNow is among the eight startups and the only African startup selected to participate in the latest Start Path class. The program provides opportunities to co-innovate, gain expert knowledge, and reach a global customer base for the brightest startups in the world.

Mastercard Start Path is an award-winning startup engagement program within the Mastercard Developers portfolio, which aims to support startups on their scaling journey across financial services industries globally. The Mastercard Developers portfolio provides the services and tools fintech innovators need to iterate at each stage of their journey, transform bold ideas and achieve scale at pace to bring more people into the digital economy. Through Start Path, Mastercard will provide NowNow with operational support, commercial engagement, and the opportunity for strategic investment. NowNow who aims to deliver best in class financial services in Nigeria and Africa would benefit from the opportunity to collaborate with other innovative startups across the globe.

Chief Executive Officer of NowNow Digital Systems, Sahir Berry, said: “It is a pleasure to be recognized as an emerging leader in the fintech sector, and our participation in the Mastercard Start Path engagement program reinforces our commitment to enabling innovative financial solutions. This opportunity means that NowNow can scale its solutions while learning from the leading global payment technology company. Combining this expert guidance with our innovative solutions, we are confident in the future.”

Country Manager/Area Business Head, West Africa at Mastercard, Ebehijie Momoh, said: “At Mastercard we are proud to collaborate with businesses that are committed to the development ofthe local digital payments landscape which directly results in the growth of the economy. The Start Path program was designed to enable high-potential fintech startups to take advantage of Mastercard’s resources to co-innovate and quickly scale up operations. As the digital economy increasingly becomes the economy, enabling NowNow to achieve its vision only brings us closer to our financial inclusion commitment to connect a total of 1 billion individuals and 50 million micro and small merchants (MSMs) to the digital economy by 2025.”