Kenyan start-up wins Sh5m Visa prize

Kenyan technology start-up Mookh Africa has been awarded a Sh5 million prize in the Visa Everywhere Initiative Sub Saharan Africa competition.
Besides the cash prize, the company also secured an opportunity to work with Visa to develop its concept further.
Mookh Africa developed a social business payments solution which makes it easy for people in Africa to buy and sell on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Once the seller creates an online store on Mookh, they can embed it into their Facebook page. The Kenyan start-up won both the Social Business Payments challenge and the overall prize for its idea.
This was on how start-ups leverage mass reach and social media partner platforms like Facebook to help businesses operating in fast-paced consumer-centric environments improve cash flow and receive payments.
Mookh topped the 12 finalists to emerge the overall winner of the initiative focusing on start-ups and designed to encourage the development of the next big thing in payments.
The winning solution beat other finalists selected from 238 submissions.
“We unanimously decided on the winners. There were very clear, innovative ideas; or ones with phenomenal social impact,” Carmen Whatley, Managing Director Accenture Digital Financial Services and one of the judges, said in a statement.
“All the winners have incredible ideas for Africa — from opening up access to finance for customer to linking up small farmers with financiers — the biggest highlight has been seeing these ideas and their social impact.”