Description
In this episode, I sit down with Germain Bahri, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Zazu, a neobank for SMEs in South Africa and Morocco.
We go deep on how to build a fintech from scratch in emerging markets and why partnerships aren't optional, they're survival.
Germain spent years at the core of Europe's fintech wave, Bankable, Solaris Bank and saw models like Qonto, Pleo, and Shine scale from the inside.
He and his co-founder took everything they learned, packed their bags, and moved to South Africa to build the Qonto of Africa.
A bet in markets where the infrastructure is half-built, the banks are 20 years behind, and the playbook doesn't exist yet. Zazu launched in South Africa first: 3M SMEs, formal economy, solid payment rails. Then they expanded to Morocco to own the MENA region.
They're now scaling to thousands of customers through one strategy: partnerships. Because in these markets, you can't brute-force growth with ads and sales teams. You need distributors who already own the trust and the base.
Here's what Germain breaks down:
Why they partnered with Access Bank as their Baas provider
The distributor playbook: payment providers, legal/accounting tech, e-commerce platforms embedding Zazu into platforms with hundreds of thousands of merchants.
The reality of building in Africa: PCI DSS compliance ignored by local partners, banking UX still need to be improved, education hurdles around neobanks
How they hired an AI agent startup in South Africa. They loved the use cases so much they joined Zazu full-time
Key advice for fintech founders: find the C-level decision maker early, make sure incentives are aligned, quantify everything (no press release partnerships), and start with a small POC to build inertia
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