FirstRand acquires stake in Emerging Market Fintech Optasia concurrent with its IPO

FirstRand Limited today announced an agreement to acquire 20.1% of Optasia, one of the world’s largest AI-powered fintech platforms providing financial access to people across emerging markets. The group is acquiring this strategic investment concurrent with Optasia’s IPO which is in progress.

FirstRand believes that this investment in Optasia represents an exciting opportunity to leverage a proven fintech platform that has a successful track record of solving the lending needs of underbanked or unbanked consumers, practitioners and micro enterprises which have had difficulty accessing traditional credit products. Optasia’s ability to pre-score customers, process micro loans at scale and use mobile data sales as a credit collection mechanism is highly innovative and is clearly meeting the needs of millions of customers in 38 countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Ultimately Optasia offers FirstRand access to these new markets and new customers, which would be challenging to acquire organically and provides the group with geographic expansion opportunities in key emerging markets.

FirstRand believes that its retail and business bank FNB will be in a strong position to leverage the proprietary technology and AI capabilities of the Optasia platform to accelerate its own strategy to grow in segments in South Africa where it is underrepresented and markets in its broader Africa portfolio.

Mary Vilakazi, CEO of FirstRand, commented: “We are excited to acquire this interest in Optasia which represents a key step in executing our growth strategy to leverage technology platforms to enhance credit capabilities and expand financial access across the continent.”