All session
by Yahaya Shehu Shantali
Day 1
9:00 am - 9:45 am | By Yahaya Shehu Shantali,
Financial institutions across Africa face fragmented identity systems, rising fraud, high KYC costs, and increasing regulatory pressure, while regulators lack real-time oversight tools to monitor compliance effectively. This results in slow onboarding, higher AML risks, operational inefficiencies, and limited cross-border interoperability.
VerifiIQ solves this by providing a regulatory-grade financial identity infrastructure layer that combines AI-powered identity verification, compliance risk scoring, and regulator-facing oversight dashboards. We integrate biometric, document, and behavioral verification with real-time AML intelligence to enable secure, compliant onboarding and transaction monitoring.
Our value proposition is simple: we reduce fraud, lower compliance costs, and provide scalable, audit-ready infrastructure that strengthens trust between financial institutions and regulators.
Our competitive advantage lies in our infrastructure-first architecture, regulator-integrated design, cross-border interoperability focus, and deep alignment with emerging-market regulatory complexity — positioning VerifiIQ not as a KYC tool, but as Africa’s financial compliance backbone.
Nigeria’s public sector credit market, covering over 2.1 million stable-income federal and state employees, suffers from a lack of digital infrastructure. This leads to systemic data fragmentation, where lenders can’t detect loan stacking, resulting in high credit risk, defaults, and inefficiency. Allverter solves this by providing a secure API that acts as a centralized “single source of truth” for public sector employee credit. Our platform integrates with government payroll systems like IPPIS and lenders’ existing software, enabling real-time verification of employment status and aggregate loan exposure. This data-driven approach has already helped lenders reduce defaults by flagging multiple loan attempts, transforming lending into a compliant, low-risk process. Our value proposition creates a win-win-win: lenders reduce credit losses and speed up disbursements, public sector workers gain access to affordable credit, and the financial system benefits from the infrastructure to unlock billions in capital. Our competitive advantage lies in our direct integration with government payroll systems, a first-mover advantage in public sector credit, and a founding team with unmatched expertise in Nigerian fintech and public policy.
(a) What is the problem your customers/users are facing?
Nigeria’s 35 million MSMEs lose an average of 4 hours per tax cycle navigating fragmented federal and state filing systems without accountants, guidance, or margin for error. Manual compliance generates a 70% tax gap nationally, costs businesses up to ₦500,000 annually in avoidable penalties, and leaves them permanently locked out of formal credit because they cannot produce the verified tax history that banks require for loan approvals.
(b) How are you solving the problem?
TaxPadi is an AI-powered tax compliance platform that automates CIT, VAT, PAYE, and WHT calculations by reading a business’s financial data and filing directly via live API connections to FIRS and the Lagos State Revenue Service. We reduce filing time from 4 hours to under 30 minutes, maintain a 100% acceptance rate across all filings to date, and generate verified tax histories that convert informal businesses into credit-eligible borrowers.
(c) What is your value proposition?
TaxPadi is the only Nigerian solution that combines AI-driven legal interpretation of the Finance Act and state tax codes, direct one-click API filing with government revenue authorities, and a marketplace connecting MSMEs to licensed tax professionals at ₦12,000 per session, making professional-grade compliance accessible to businesses that previously could not afford it.
(d) How do you define your competitive advantage?
Our moat is built on two assets that competitors cannot replicate quickly: government-level trust through live API integrations with FIRS and LIRS, and a finely tuned regulatory AI engine trained on the Finance Acts 2020–2024 and state tax codes. Across 15 pilot users spanning retail, consulting, and services, we have achieved zero rejected returns, the proof point that validates our model before we scale to 300 paying subscribers by mid-2026.
a. What is the problem your customers/users are facing? Africa’s cross-border payment market, a sector valued at over $1.5 trillion annually, is fundamentally broken. Businesses and individuals face exorbitant fees often exceeding 10%, settlement times of 3-7 days, and crippling operational friction due to a fragmented patchwork of legacy systems. This inefficiency acts as a direct tax on economic growth and deepens financial exclusion, a critical issue in Nigeria where over 60% of the population remains excluded from formal banking services. For SMEs and financial institutions, the inability to transact instantly and affordably in local currencies creates insurmountable barriers to intra-African trade, locking them out of a continental free trade area poised for exponential growth.
b. How are you solving the problem? Mehtic Technology has built the proprietary financial infrastructure to solve this challenge at scale. We are deploying a next-generation payments-as-a-service platform that combines the intelligence of AI-powered banking with the speed and security of Web3-based payment rails. Our system bypasses the costly and slow correspondent banking network, enabling us to offer instant, near-zero-cost cross-border transactions that settle directly in local currencies (e.g., NGN to GHS). This isn’t just a consumer app; it’s a foundational B2B and B2B2C solution that empowers banks, fintechs, and SMEs to offer superior payment services to their own customers, driving continent-wide financial inclusion from the top down.
c. What is your value proposition? For our clients—businesses, SMEs, and financial institutions, our value proposition is radical simplicity and quantifiable impact. We deliver Speed: reducing transaction settlement from days to under three minutes; Cost-Efficiency: cutting processing fees by up to 80% compared to traditional rails; and Accessibility: offering real-time liquidity and direct local currency settlement across African corridors. For our established partners like Globus Bank and Providus Bank, we provide a single, plug-and-play API that unlocks immediate access to the cross-border payments market, creating new revenue streams without any costly or time-consuming infrastructure overhaul.
d. How do you define your competitive advantage? Our defensible “moat” is built on three pillars. First, our unique hybrid infrastructure: competitors are trapped in either outdated legacy systems or volatile, pure-crypto solutions. Our AI and Web3 combination delivers the best of both: the compliance and stability of traditional finance with the efficiency and speed of decentralized technology. Second, our strategic banking partnerships: our integrations with regulated institutions like Globus Bank and Providus Bank provide the critical regulatory legitimacy, last-mile settlement, and distribution channels that new entrants cannot replicate. Third, our speed to market: our API-first architecture ensures frictionless integration, enabling partners to go live and generate revenue in weeks, not the typical 6-12 months. This powerful combination positions Mehtic Technology not just as another payments company, but as the essential, scalable, and regulated financial rail for the future of African commerce.
133 million adults across Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Egypt are locked out of formal credit, not because they lack economic activity, but because banks cannot see it; their risk models require payslips and collateral that informal workers and small businesses simply do not have. Africa’s SME credit gap stands at $300 billion, and those excluded are forced to borrow from informal lenders at 15–30% interest per month, compounding poverty rather than building wealth. CredPal solves this by building credit profiles from the financial data banks ignore: mobile money transaction volume, recurring utility payments, airtime purchase patterns, and verified digital income. Our AI engine processes over 1,000 loan applications per minute at 99%+ accuracy and delivers a credit decision in under three minutes. On a single platform, businesses can access credit through loans, BNPL, and credit lines, and simultaneously offer credit to their own customers using CredPal’s infrastructure, the only unified solution in Africa addressing both sides of the credit market alongside multi-currency global payment rails. Our traction validates the model: $36 million disbursed in 24 months; 1 million registered users; 60,000 monthly active users; 5,000+ merchant partners across retail, education, and healthcare; $1.8 million ARR; and a 98%+ repayment rate, proving that informal-sector workers are creditworthy when assessed fairly. For individual users, CredPal converts excluded informal workers into credit-eligible consumers who can access loans of N10,000 to N500,000 for school fees, medical emergencies, and inventory restocking; for merchants, Pay Later integration increases sales volume by 30–40% and eliminates cart abandonment entirely. Our structural competitive advantage is threefold: a proprietary AI credit engine trained on 2.4 million transaction records that compounds in predictive accuracy with every new user, a CBN Microfinance Bank license and SEC Fund Manager license representing a regulatory moat competitors cannot quickly replicate, and a customer acquisition cost of $0.60 against an industry average of $5, enabling profitable expansion into the lower-income segments others cannot serve economically. Backed by Y Combinator, Tangerine Life, and Greenhouse Capital, and partnered with Mastercard, VISA, Jumia, and Access Bank, CredPal is positioned to capture the African fintech market, projected to reach $65 billion by 2030.
(a) Over 83 million Nigerians own smartphones, yet fewer than 1% have device insurance, leaving millions, especially the 34.5 million earning ₦30,000 – ₦100,000 monthly, exposed to repair costs of ₦50,000–₦150,000, equivalent to up to four weeks of wages and temporary loss of access to banking, work, and education.
(b) Scrella provides affordable insurance for new and used smartphones at ₦3,500 every six months, enabling users to onboard remotely and submit claims digitally by photographing damage in-app, with approvals in under 60 minutes and same-day repairs through our vetted vendor network.
(c) Our value proposition is simple: the fastest, most affordable, and most accessible device protection in Nigeria, built specifically for the mass market excluded by traditional insurers.
(d) Our competitive advantage lies in our 80+ vetted repair partners across 12 Nigerian cities, built over 18 months, our proprietary claims engine, and distribution partnerships such as Scoosh Mobile, which together create a scalable, difficult-to-replicate infrastructure model.
Since launching in January 2024, we have onboarded 2,040 users (92% first-time insurance buyers), processed 25 claims at a 97% satisfaction rate, and generated $10,000 in premium revenue through organic and partnership-driven growth.
Startups and regulated enterprises struggle to meet growing global and local compliance requirements due to manual processes, fragmented tools, high costs, and long certification timelines, leading to funding delays and lost opportunities.
Antlar provides an AI-driven compliance platform that automates control mapping, tracks compliance in real time, and ensures audit readiness with minimal manual effort.
We enable startups to achieve standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and NDPA faster, cheaper, and with less complexity—without needing compliance experts or expensive consultants.
Antlar combines AI automation, a simple user experience for non-GRC teams, and localized frameworks tailored specifically for African and emerging markets.
(a) Businesses struggle with fragmented, unclear, and costly regulatory compliance processes, often relying on guesswork or informal intermediaries.
(b) We solve this by providing a digital platform that shows the exact licenses and approvals required by business type and location, and help business owners acquire all their licenses through verified professionals.
(c) Our value proposition is fast, accurate, and affordable compliance clarity, saving founders time, reducing risk, and enabling them to operate legally from day one.
(d) Our competitive advantage lies in our fully digital, searchable, location-specific model, near zero marginal cost scalability, vetted expert network, and cost control, none of which traditional consulting firms or static portals offer.
a. The Problem:
Access to credit in emerging markets is still heavily constrained because lenders lack reliable tools to assess borrower risk quickly. Many financial institutions rely on manual underwriting, fragmented credit bureau data, and inconsistent decision processes. This slows down lending, increases operational costs, and leads to higher default rates. Smaller fintech lenders face an even bigger challenge because building a robust credit decision system requires significant technical and data infrastructure. As a result, millions of creditworthy borrowers remain underserved while lenders struggle to scale safely. The problem is not demand for credit, but the lack of intelligent infrastructure to evaluate it efficiently.
b. Our Solution:
Jupita is a loan origination and automated underwriting platform that enables lenders to make credit decisions in minutes. The platform integrates credit bureau data, bank statement analysis, and customizable risk models into a single system accessible through APIs and dashboards. Lenders can onboard borrowers, run automated credit checks, and receive instant decision recommendations without building complex infrastructure internally. Our system standardizes credit evaluation while allowing institutions to configure their own policies and risk appetite. This significantly reduces loan processing time and improves portfolio quality.
c. Value Proposition: Speed meets Precision – Jupita gives lenders the infrastructure they need to originate and underwrite loans quickly without building complex credit systems themselves. Our solution allows lenders to evaluate borrowers, make consistent credit decisions, and in minutes instead of days. By automating credit underwriting and centralizing credit data, Jupita reduces operational costs, improves risk assessment, and helps lenders scale safely. Our value proposition is simple: we make it easy for any lender to launch and run a modern, data-driven lending operation.
d. Competitive Advantage:
Jupita’s competitive advantage lies in providing a complete credit decision infrastructure rather than a single data or scoring tool. While many solutions focus only on credit searchId verification or bank statement analysis, Jupita combines loan origination, ID verification, data aggregation, risk scoring, and automated decisioning in one platform. This significantly reduces the time and technical expertise required for lenders to deploy robust underwriting systems. The platform is also highly configurable, allowing institutions to define their own credit policies and risk models instead of relying on rigid third-party scoring rules. By acting as the core credit engine behind lending operations, Jupita becomes deeply integrated into lenders’ workflows, making it both highly valuable and difficult to replace.
(a) Many people, freelancers, and small businesses in Nigeria face slow, unreliable, and untrustworthy payments, especially in social commerce, e-commerce, and low connectivity areas.
(b) PayPetal solves this by offering fast online and offline payments, online card transactions, biometric authentication, credit options, and built-in escrow to protect both buyers and sellers.
(c) For individuals, freelancers, and merchants, our platform provides secure, reliable, and seamless transactions without the frustration of failed payments or disputes.
(d) For businesses, PayPetal combines a payment gateway, NFC payments, escrow, credit, and analytics in one platform to simplify financial operations.
(e) Our escrow system is unique because it works not just for merchants but also for individuals and freelancers, ensuring trust in high-risk or remote transactions.
(f) We are designed for low connectivity environments, making payments dependable even where traditional systems fail.
(g) Real-time analytics and insights help users track money, manage cash flow, and make smarter financial decisions.
(h) Overall, our competitive advantage is being an all-in-one payments and trust platform that addresses both consumer and business needs, unlike other fintechs that focus on just one aspect of payments.
In Nigeria, 35% of the population, over 50 million people, have no access to formal financial services, and the SMEs that employ 96% of the workforce face a $160B financing gap. Traditional banks require collateral, formal credit histories, and weeks of processing, which automatically disqualifies the informal traders, women entrepreneurs, and salaried workers who drive Nigeria’s $1.68 trillion mobile transaction economy, meaning a trader who needs ₦50,000 to restock or a caterer who needs capital to take a bigger contract either borrows from predatory informal lenders or watches the opportunity pass. Oxymon solves this through a mobile-first platform that uses AI-powered alternative credit scoring, built on mobile and behavioural data, to assess and approve customers in minutes, with no paperwork, no branch visits, and no collateral required, delivering microloans, SME capital, savings, investments, and micro-insurance through a single app optimised for low-end devices and slow networks. For our customers, Oxymon means the money they need to grow their business or handle an emergency is available the same day they ask for it, on terms designed around how they actually earn, irregular income, seasonal cash flow, not the rigid structures banks built for salaried professionals. Repayment builds their credit profile with us, so each loan they take gets cheaper and faster, turning what used to be a dead end into a financial track record they own. Our competitive advantage is a proprietary credit-scoring engine trained on four years of repayment data across 7,500 customers and $1.25M in disbursements, each cycle makes the model more accurate, defaults lower, and approvals faster, creating a data advantage a new entrant would need years of lending activity to build. This is reinforced by real-time KYC/AML infrastructure baked into the product from day one, enabling us to scale without the compliance risks that have tripped up faster-moving competitors. Together, these make Oxymon not just accessible to customers that banks ignore, but also structurally difficult for companies to replicate.
(a) What is the problem your customers/users are facing?
African businesses face complex, inconsistent, and manual trade processes. Cross-border trade documentation, compliance requirements, and market-entry rules vary by country, creating uncertainty, errors, delays, and higher costs, especially for SMEs and foreign companies trying to enter African markets.
(b) How are you solving the problem?
AfriTrade AI turns trade rules, documentation, and regulatory complexity into structured, explainable systems. The platform guides users through trade setup, generates and validates required trade documents, flags compliance gaps, and provides readiness signals, making trade clearer, faster, and more predictable.
(c) What is your value proposition?
We simplify Africa’s trade ecosystem. By automating trade documentation, compliance checks, and readiness evaluation, AfriTrade AI reduces friction and risk, empowers businesses to trade confidently, and unlocks opportunities for market expansion and foreign entry, all without heavy manual overhead.
(d) How do you define your competitive advantage?
Our advantage lies in combining domain expertise in trade, regulation, and technology with a data-first platform tailored to African trade realities. We translate complex rules into actionable workflows, integrate country-specific requirements, and provide finance-readiness insights, creating a uniquely comprehensive and locally relevant solution.
(a) What is the problem your customers/users are facing?
African SMEs, freelancers, and diaspora users face high cross border payment fees of 8 to 15 percent, slow settlement times of three to five days, limited currency corridors, and restricted access to USD accounts. Many African currency pairs lack direct exchange routes, while 57 percent of adults remain unbanked, limiting access to formal financial services. These frictions create cash flow challenges, FX losses, and operational inefficiencies for businesses operating globally .
(b) How are you solving the problem?
BluPay is building Africa’s first AI powered cross border payments infrastructure on blockchain rails, enabling users to send money as easily as sending a text message . Users deposit local currency, which is converted into USDC stablecoin, settled instantly on chain, and paid out in the recipient’s local currency through banks or mobile money integrations . Our conversational AI interface simplifies complex financial transactions into intuitive chat based commands with transparent fees and instant confirmation .
(c) What is your value proposition?
BluPay offers instant settlement, low fees of 1 to 2 percent, multiple African currency pairs, FX optimization, and mobile first access . We reduce transaction costs dramatically compared to traditional remittance services and provide predictable USD exposure through stablecoin based liquidity. Our platform combines compliance, security, and conversational simplicity to unlock seamless global payments for African businesses.
(d) How do you define your competitive advantage?
Our competitive advantage lies in our AI driven, chat first interface combined with blockchain based instant settlement and Africa focused corridor expansion . Unlike API heavy or corridor limited competitors, BluPay supports any African currency pair through stablecoin liquidity while maintaining simplicity for end users . With over 1,600 transactions and more than 380,000 dollars in transaction volume to date , we have demonstrated early traction while building scalable infrastructure designed for regulatory compliance and long term growth.
(a) Problem
Most teams struggle to integrate AI into their existing systems without rebuilding everything—a process that takes months and requires $150K+ AI engineers.
(b) Solution
Tuul makes AI integration simple. Anyone, even without deep technical experience,can build, test, and deploy AI agents that connect to their existing tools and data on one platform with production-ready infrastructure. Users can also make their agents public, allowing them to appear in our marketplace and be reused by others.
(c) Value Proposition
The platform is designed so that anyone can create and deploy AI agent, even with little technical experience, while still giving engineering teams the control needed for production systems.
Tuul also integrates seamlessly with existing software. Most companies cannot afford to rebuild their infrastructure to adopt AI, so we made integration as simple as connecting to their current backend, APIs, and internal tools.
Our advantage is making production-ready AI practical for everyday teams, reducing deployment cost and development time from months to hours.
(d) Competitive Advantage
1. Hybrid Power & Accessibility – Combines the simplicity of low-code/no-code platforms with the flexibility and power of developer frameworks.
2. Plug-and-Play Adoption – Businesses leverages existing engineering teams, cutting AI deployment costs by up to 10x.
3. Network-Driven Moat – Our template marketplace grows stronger as users share and reuse agent blueprints, creating network effects that competitors can’t easily replicate.
4. Founder Advantage – Built by developers who lived the problem, blending technical depth with authentic customer insight.
5. Global Capital Efficiency – Lean operations in Africa provide cost advantages, resilience, and a global-first perspective, allowing competitive execution at scale.
The Startup Worldcup Abuja Regional Challenge Application is closed.