Rebuilding Africa’s Tech Stack: Kamal Budhabhatti on Voice, AI, and the Future of Little
What happens when one of Africa’s top engineers sets out to rebuild a fintech and mobility platform—this time using AI?In this episode of the F-Squared Podcast, Samora Kariuki sits down with Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO of Little, to unpack how he’s applying LLMs, voice commands, and platform-first thinking to transform the next phase of African digital infrastructure. This is a deep dive into technical decisions, architectural trade-offs, and why Kamal believes voice—not buttons—is the future interface for fintech and mobility.🎙 Guest Kamal Budhabhatti, CEO @ Little Builder of systems used by banks, telcos, and now millions of users across Africa.📩 Subscribe to the Frontier Fintech Newsletter for more operator-driven insights. 🔗 Follow us @f.squared.podcast on all platforms.
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Eric Muriuki on M-Shwari, Fuliza & Building Africa’s Next Fintech Platform
M-Shwari scaled to 15 million users in 41 days. Fuliza became a verb. Now, Eric Muriuki is building Loop DFS into the Stripe of Africa.In this episode of F-Squared, Samora Kariuki goes deep with one of Africa’s most experienced digital finance leaders. They unpack:The legal architecture behind M-Pesa’s riseWhat went wrong—and right—with M-Shwari’s launchHow Fuliza went from pitch to cultural phenomenonLoop’s pivot from neobank to fintech infrastructure playWhy AI-first hiring might be the futureThe case for fintech as Kenya’s next big export industryNo fluff. Just timeless lessons from the person who’s built the most successful digital finance products in Africa.
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Rewiring African Payments: Obi Emeratom on Zone, Blockchain, and the Future of Regulated DeFi
In this episode, I sit down with Obi Emeratom, the founder and CEO of Zone, to explore how his company is rebuilding the core infrastructure of African payments using a regulated, blockchain-based architecture.We unpack:The journey from Appzone to Zone and why the spin-off was necessaryHow Zone won over Nigerian banks without evangelizing cryptoWhat makes regulated blockchains credible to central banksWhy decentralization with permissioning may be the right model for AfricaThe real-world bottlenecks of legacy switches and how Zone bypasses themZone Pay, deep linking, merchant wallets, and the next wave of use casesWhy Obi believes the future of payments is regulated DeFi built from the ground upThis is not a theoretical chat t’s a grounded look at the friction in today’s systems and a pragmatic blueprint for what comes next.🎧 Listen in if you care about the evolution of African fintech infrastructure, cross-border payments, and compliance-aligned innovation.🔗 Subscribe to the F-Squared Podcast 📰 Get the newsletter - https://frontierfintech.substack.com/📱 Follow us on socialsX (Twitter) - SamoraKariukiTik Tok🔎 Want more fintech analysis like this? Subscribe to the newsletter at frontierfintech.substack.com
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Stablecoins in Africa: What’s Real, What’s Not
What if moving money across borders was as seamless as sending an email?In this episode of the F-Squared Podcast, host Samora sits down with Eytan Messika (Nilos) and Nicolai Eddy (Nala & Rafiki) to unpack stablecoins in the African context—from FX innovation and liquidity provisioning to the regulatory frictions shaping adoption.🔍 What’s inside:Why correspondent banking is outdated for frontier marketsHow stablecoins create real-time liquidity (and where the frictions still lie)Insights on remittance, treasury, imports, and P2P arbitrageWhat it takes to build trust with regulators—and why that’s the long-term moat📊 A grounded, builder-first take on stablecoins. Real use cases. Real frictions. Real potential.🎙 Guests:Eytan Messika, Co-founder @ NilosNicolai Eddy, COO & Co-founder @ Nala & Rafiki🔗 Subscribe to the F-Squared Podcast 📰 Get the newsletter 📱 Follow us on Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@f.squared.podcast#Stablecoins #FintechAfrica #Remittances #FX #USDC #CrossBorderPayments #DigitalCurrency #FSquaredPodc
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This changed everything for Stitch
South Africa’s payments scene looks “solved” from the outside—until you try to wire money 50 times a day from your phone. In this candid conversation, Kiaan Pillay, CEO & co-founder of Stitch, sits down with Samora Kariuki to unpack how a scrappy side-project became the enterprise payments partner for Binance, Vodacom, Foschini Group, and more.You’ll hear:The origin story: screen-scraping bank portals to automate payouts and stumbling onto Africa’s “Plaid moment.”Why enterprises cared—and the overlooked gaps in settlement, reconciliation, and fraud data that incumbents ignored.Pivot lessons: off-boarding SMEs, doubling down on high-touch service, and hiring engineers as 24/7 support.Capitec Pay, PayShap & mobile money—what’s really driving South Africa’s rapid shift to pay-by-bank rails.The Binance baptism: how one high-risk client forced Stitch to mature overnight.Enterprise sales realities: slow, lumpy, but worth the step-change in volume.Advice for founders: make people say no, protect culture, and learn to be impatient and patient at once.
Frontier Fintech is a podcast about the business of fintech in Africa. We speak with founders, executives, investors, and regulators who are shaping financial services across the continent—helping you connect the dots in Pan-African fintech.
South Africa