Josephine Christopher is a senior business journalist for The Citizen and Mwananchi newspapers
Mwananchi Communications Limitted
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s growing fintech sector needs a new approach to partnerships between startups, banks and mobile network operators if local companies are to scale, industry leaders have said.
The number of active fintech companies in Tanzania has increased more than fivefold, from 33 in 2021 to 171 in 2026, according to the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF).
But despite the rapid growth, fintech founders say partnerships with established financial institutions remain one of the biggest hurdles to commercial expansion.
The issue featured prominently during the Built Here: From Experimentation to Scale — Tanzania’s Fintech Journey, 2020–2026 session, which brought together founders, and investors to examine what Tanzania must get right to build a leading fintech market.
Tembo co-founder Mr Reuben Mwatosya said banks often make the mistake of judging fintechs based on their current size rather than their potential.
“Banks evaluate early-stage fintechs through a static lens, dismissing them as too small, overly risky or inexperienced. While those labels might hold true at the beginning, they are not permanent,” he said.
Mr Mwatosya, a former banker, said banks often become interested in fintechs only after they have established a track record and demonstrated commercial value.
He said the problem is also one of communication, with fintechs and banks often speaking different languages.
Fintech founders may focus on technology and innovation, while banks are more concerned with conventional measures such as deposits, margins, customer acquisition and transaction volumes.
“If you are a fintech pitching to a bank, you cannot speak purely in tech jargon because it won't resonate—you must speak banking,” he said.
However, Selcom founder and chief executive Mr Sameer Hirji cautioned fintechs against viewing corporate partnerships as an automatic route to success.
“There is a common assumption in the market that securing a corporate partnership is an automatic golden ticket to success. In reality, modern partnerships can be somewhat overrated,” he said.
Mr Hirji said the role of partnerships has changed as banks and other large institutions have developed stronger internal technology capabilities.
When Selcom entered the market, banks and telecom operators lacked systems that could seamlessly connect mobile money with traditional bank accounts.
Selcom built the necessary middleware and offered banks integrations without upfront software licensing fees, instead operating through a revenue-sharing model.
But as financial institutions increasingly build technology in-house, fintechs whose businesses depend on acting as intermediaries face greater pressure.
“Technology has commoditised the core processing layer,” Mr Hirji said.
He argued that fintechs need to move beyond simply processing transactions between institutions and instead own customer relationships, distribution and more of the end-to-end value chain.
For fintechs, institutional partners should provide critical infrastructure such as liquidity, transaction processing or regulatory access, rather than becoming the entire business model.
UNCDF’s Innovation, Research and Policy Specialist Kandyl Kotta said integration with banks and mobile network operators remains a major operational challenge for startups.
Other constraints include limited access to patient capital, shortages of technical talent, regulatory and tax uncertainties and the high cost of acquiring customers and building digital trust.
Yet the market presents significant opportunities.
More than 70 percent of Tanzanian adults have a mobile money account, while digital payment volumes reached 6.4 billion transactions in 2024.
The growth of local fintechs is also beginning to change Tanzania’s position in the regional market.
Companies such as NALA and Tembo are expanding beyond Tanzania, while Selcom has established operations in other African markets.
Mr Mwatosya said access to larger markets is increasingly driving Tanzanian fintechs to look beyond their home market.
The challenge now, industry leaders said, is to ensure partnerships evolve alongside the sector.
For banks, that means recognising the potential of emerging fintechs before they become established players. For fintechs, it means understanding the commercial, regulatory and operational priorities of institutional partners while building businesses that retain strategic value.
As Tanzania seeks to become one of Africa’s leading fintech markets by 2031, the next phase may depend less on how many partnerships are signed and more on whether those partnerships can actually help both sides scale.
