The Trajectory Africa

On this episode of The Trajectory Africa, we’ll hear from Wiza Jalakasi, Director for Africa Market Development at EBanx, a payments processor headquartered in Brazil. He’ll shed some light on why building payment rails in Africa is deceptively hard work—from why some payment methods work better in some places than others to whether infrastructure-building or enabling payments through APIs is the best way to create value.

[5:41] Key milestones in payments infrastructure creation

[11:53] Why certain payment methods gain traction in different areas

[15:39] How consumer payments work and what the infrastructure looks like

[26:11] Back end infrastructure builders vs. API players 

[33:30] VC leapfrogging logic vs. the path toward building a massive payments infrastructure business 


[46:34] Similarities in payments problems across emerging markets

[52:50] Pressing problems remaining to be solved for payments to be functional 

[1:00] Counterintuitive first principle