Optasia came a long way from topping up phone credit. One year after its R23.5 billion ($1.4 billion) debut on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Africa's biggest securities market, the pan-African fintech is growing faster than it expected. The company pulled in $270 million in revenue in the first nine months of 2026, a 45% jump year on year, powered by a deliberate push into microfinance.
The logic behind that push is straightforward. Millions of people across the continent earn their living through informal businesses and gig work but get shut out of conventional lending because they have no payslips, no formal credit history, and nothing to put up as collateral. Optasia uses artificial intelligence and alternative data, think mobile transaction histories and behavioural patterns, to extend credit to exactly those customers. Its platform now enables telecoms companies, banks and other partners to distribute that credit at scale.
The company started life by letting mobile subscribers borrow airtime when they ran low on credit. It was useful, but as CEO Salvador Anglada put it in an interview with TechCabal: "Airtime credit is essentially a convenience product." The bigger prize, he says, lies in serving the broader borrowing needs of consumers and small businesses that traditional lenders routinely ignore.
The numbers make his case. According to the World Bank's Global Findex Database 2025, only 7% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa borrowed from mobile money providers in 2024. Yet those same providers accounted for nearly 60% of all formal borrowing in the region. Optasia now wants microfinance to account for more than 80% of its revenue, and it has its sights set on merchant financing and working capital for small businesses too.
That kind of ambition comes with real questions about affordability and responsible lending. Getting credit to people who have never had access to it is one thing. Making sure it does not tip them into over-indebtedness is another thing entirely.
Originally published by TechCabal.