Easy Equities is the overall winner of the 2016 African FinTech Awards at the Finance Indaba Africa at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg on 13 October 2016.
- All about the African FinTech Awards 2016
- All about Finance Indaba Africa 2016
The revolutionary share-trading platform, which allows investors to buy fractions of popular shares painlessly and at low cost, was awarded more points by the judges than any other nominee. It also scooped the honours in the InvestTech category, beating property-trading platform WealthMigrate and daily investment forecast vehicle I Know First to the award.
"Thanks, it is overwhelming. Thanks to my team for never fearing to fail to innovate. I give them one idea and they turn it to a 100 and make a success of all of them. We want to democratise stock trading and expose innovation in Africa. The continent has a big role to play in FinTech. I look forward to collaborating with all of you in the future," an elated CEO Charles Savage told the assembled guests.
The judges had the tough job of selecting the final three nominees in each category from hundreds put forward through an extensive voting process. They assessed each one based on innovation, value, delivery, traction and customer satisfaction. The finalists were announced ten days ago and were given the opportunity to pitch today.
Ziaad Suleman, COO of sponsor IBM, congratulated the organisers on hosting a fantastic event.
"IBM believes strongly in innovation and has a long history as an innovator. We provided the computing power for the journey to the moon and progressed to everything from barcodes at shopping tills to magnet stripes on credit cards, hard drives and many other kinds of innovation. We ask that you engage with platforms and leverage opportunities at this critical crossroads to reduce employment and build the country. We are privileged to be part of this event."
Here is the full list of winners:
- Retail Banking: Baobab Microcred
- Bitcoin & Blockchain: The Sun Exchange
- InvestTech: Easy Equities
- Payments & Transfers: Cellulant
- Lending & Financing: Ovamba
- Incumbent Banks: FNB
- Overall winner: Easy Equities