S. African blockchain startup wins MIT/Mastercard Foundation prize for financial inclusion

By Andrei Skvarsky.

South African startup Wala, which runs a blockchain platform for instant micro-payments, has won a $100,000 prize for “innovation in financial inclusion” from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Mastercard Foundation.

Wala provides an app for instant zero-fee and tax-free payments. Its users can also receive a cryptocurrency wallet and access to transaction banking, loans and insurance.

Wala’s winning the prize was announced during an MIT event in Nairobi on August 29.

Wala was picked from among ten firms shortlisted for the 2018 Zambezi Prize for Innovation in Financial Inclusion, according to a statement from the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, an MIT organisation for enterprise promotion in the developing world.

The Zambezi Prize is awarded to winners of a competition for fintechs organised by the Legatum Center with support from the Mastercard Foundation, an Africa-focused entity set up by the Mastercard International financial services corporation in 2006 and working for financial inclusion and wider access to education in what is a largely poverty-stricken continent.

Kenya’s Tulaa and RecyclePoints, which were also shortlisted, each received an award of $30,000.

Each of the other seven firms was awarded $5,000. One of them was South African, one Senegalese, three were Kenyan, and two Ghanaian, according to the statement, distributed by Lausanne-based news service APO.

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