Almost a third of the money invested in African startups was gobbled up by new fintech firms, according to research from Disrupt Africa
The African Tech Startups Funding Report found that fintech firms accounted for $55 million (29.6%) of the total capital invested in new African companies.
The report states a number of reasons why Africa is ripe for further fintech investment including the fact that 80% of the continent's population have no access to formal banking services.
The biggest African fintech success story so far is M-Pesa, the mobile microbanking service that launched in Kenya in 2007. It processed $656 million in transactions in 2014 and this is expected to double in the next four years as it expands to new markets.
Disrupt Africa says the fintech market will also be boosted by initiatives such as Swift's Innotribe Startup Challenge and MasterCard's Smart Path programme.