Revolut is coming to Morocco

Revolut, the European neobank, has hired former Uber exec Amine Berrada to lead its push into Casablanca. A local team is currently being assembled as Revolut gears up to apply for a banking license from Morocco’s central bank, Bank Al-Maghrib.

So, why Morocco? One word: remittances. The country recorded $11.7 billion in remittances in 2024. Morocco sits close to Europe—Revolut’s headquarters—and is warming up to accepting digital services. Morocco is set to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup and the 2025 African Cup of Nations (AFCON)—both expected to spike financial activity and digital payments. It’s no wonder the company referred to Morocco as an “attractive market.”

But this isn't easy money. Morocco's banking sector is heavily regulated, with a rigorous licensing process from Bank Al-Maghrib and no new foreign licences granted in over a decade. The local dirham is non-convertible, meaning you can't just convert them into dollars, euros or pounds whenever you want. This limits the flow of money in and out of the country and creates a barrier for cross-border transactions. Revolut will likely need to partner with local banks to enter meaningfully—a strategy Apple Pay adopted.

And it's facing a juggernaut:Cash Plus, the local fintech heavyweight that serves 1 million wallet users and processed over $10 billion in 2024. With funding of over $76 million in 2024, it's already defending its turf by allowing foreigners with a passport to open accounts.

Revolut's betting on momentum. The company is deep in South Africa and close to clinching a full banking license. The fintech giant sees Morocco as a gateway to the MENA region. Whether smart hires, diaspora flows, and perfect timing are enough for Revolut to crack Morocco’s complex market and hold its own against Cash Plus, we’ll see.

Orange Money buddies up with JUMO

Orange Money, the mobile money service of French telecom giant Orange S.A., is partnering with JUMO, a South Africa-based fintech, to roll out mobile microloans across Africa. Customers in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Botswana will soon be able to request credit directly through their Orange Money wallets.

This means users wouldn’t have to deal with bank queues or paperwork.

So… who’s JUMO? JUMO builds digital lending infrastructure for emerging markets. In 2021, it teamed up with it teamed up with MANSA Bank and MTN to provide loans to small businesses in Ivory Coast. Before that, the Goldman Sachs-backed company had raised $55 million to scale across Africa. To spare you the full resume, the company has algorithms to analyse how users spend, save and top up airtime to decide who can get a loan.

Why does this partnership matter? This partnership adds fuel to a bigger shift: telcos are no longer just selling airtime, they're becoming banks in their own way. Orange brings scale, with its 100 million users and processing of $184 billion transactions in 2024. JUMO brings smarts with its algorithm-driven lending engine. Mix that all together, and you get a strong attempt to bring low-risk credit to the unbanked.

It's not the first time: This partnership lands as African telcos double down on their fintech offerings. MTN MoMo is already testing partnerships in East Africa. Safaricom’s M-PESA in Ethiopia just launched an overdraft service with Awash Bank. In April, Airtel Money teamed up with Mastercard to launch a virtual card for global payments, and then partnered with the Tanzania Cooperative Development Commission (TCDC) in July to reach farmers in Tanzania.

Bottom line: African telcos are no longer just connectivity providers. As they push deeper into lending, payments, and savings, they highlight a power shift that could reshape who controls access to money across the continent.

If your phone has ever buzzed with a message from “BankAlertz” demanding your PIN “urgently,” you’re not alone. Airtel Nigeria is finally doing something about it.

The telco’s AI-powered Spam Alert Service has flagged a staggering 9.6 million suspected scam SMS in just two months. That’s enough fake messages to populate a small digital nation of fraudsters.

Launched to combat the wave of text-based scams known as smishing (phishing, but via SMS), Airtel’s AI doesn’t read your messages. Instead, it analyzes sender behavior across 250 creepy-but-smart parameters, like SIM-swapping habits, how many people get the message, and whether the sender ever receives replies (spoiler: they don’t).

Between March 13 and May 20, 2025, the system flagged over 528,000 dodgy messages from Airtel users and a whopping 9.1 million from other networks.

And while apps like WhatsApp are eating into SMS’s lunch, 22.97 billion messages were still sent in Nigeria last year. Why? Because SMS still handles bigger requests—like banking alerts and one-time passwords—especially for users with no smartphones or shaky internet.

A 2024 survey found that 58% of Nigerians had received scam messages, and 6% actually lost money, some as little as $5, others north of $100. Not life-ruining, but annoying enough to make anyone suspicious of real bank messages.

Airtel CEO Dinesh Balsingh says the Spam Alert Service is about restoring faith in digital communication, without poking around in your private texts. "We don’t read your messages,” Airtel insists, “we just read the room.”

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has since tightened rules for bulk SMS senders, but questions remain about the telecom sector’s broader cybersecurity resilience. Airtel’s AI system offers a glimpse into how technology might close the gap.

There are three things you can’t live without: air, water, and yes, your mobile devices. In corporate settings, laptops and smartphones are the lifeblood of business. They’re where work happens, where transactions are executed, and where value is created.

Despite being core to daily operations, device insurance is rarely discussed. In corporate environments where hundreds of devices are deployed, lost, damaged, or stolen with little accountability, device insurance is often lumped with broader business and property insurance.

Nigerian startup, gamp, is building a full device lifecycle management platform for businesses across the continent, covering everything from purchase and leasing to repairs and insurance, called gamp for Business.

Now, after nearly three years in operation, gamp has over 200 business customers, claims 80–90% retention. With a growing portfolio that includes device procurement, repair logistics, insurance, MDM provisioning, and international delivery, gamp wants to become the Rippling for Africa’s devices.

But is the company’s “everything-device” ambition feasible in a fragmented, cash-strapped market where trust still resides in “my guy” at Computer Village ? And does its bundling strategy translate to moats, or is it just operational sprawl?

Faith Omoniyi wrote all about it this Backend article about the startup.