Egyptian-founded fintech enza has been awarded a Payment Service Provider (PSP) Enhanced licence by the Bank of Ghana, allowing the company to operate directly in a market already crowded with established players including Flutterwave, Paystack and local challengers.
The licence, announced on June 11, 2026, permits enza to provide payment processing services to banks, financial institutions and other fintechs operating in Ghana. The company plans to launch its first customer implementations over the coming months.
enza, headquartered in Abu Dhabi with regional offices across Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, was founded in 2023 by a team of payments industry veterans. In March 2025, the company raised $6.75m in a seed funding round co-led by Algebra Ventures and Quona Capital — its first external capital since inception.
Ghana’s fintech sector has attracted intensifying interest from both regional and international players. The West African nation is widely regarded as one of the continent’s more sophisticated digital finance markets, with regulatory frameworks that have encouraged competition while seeking to maintain oversight.
Existing operators include Nigerian unicorns Flutterwave and Paystack (the latter acquired by Stripe in 2020), as well as local companies such as Hubtel, ExpressPay and Zeepay. The entry of enza adds another contender to a market where margins on basic payment processing have been under pressure.
Hany Fekry, group chief executive of enza, said the licence represented “a significant moment for our business” and that Ghana had “long been one of the continent’s most dynamic digital finance markets, with strong regulatory leadership”.
Fekry previously spent six years as a group managing director at Network International, the Dubai-headquartered payments processor with extensive operations across Africa and the Middle East. That experience has given him direct exposure to the region’s regulatory environments, bank partnerships and operational challenges — expertise that enza is banking on to navigate Ghana’s competitive landscape.
The Bank of Ghana’s PSP Enhanced licence framework is designed to balance oversight with innovation. The central bank has stated that effective payment system supervision aims to promote transaction safety and reliability while also encouraging competition and financial inclusion.
enza’s licence falls under this framework, which requires licence-holders to meet capital requirements and operational standards. The company has not disclosed the specific terms or conditions attached to its authorisation.
Rather than competing directly for consumer-facing payment volumes, enza is positioning itself as a business-to-business infrastructure provider. The company’s model involves selling technology to existing financial institutions, enabling them to offer payment products without building their own systems from scratch.
This approach mirrors strategies deployed by other infrastructure-focused fintechs across Africa, including MFS Africa (now known as Nala) and Cellulant. The differentiation, according to enza, lies in combining its team’s regional experience with technology designed for local market conditions.
The company’s offerings include support for card payments, digital wallets, real-time payment schemes, mobile money and buy now pay later products. By integrating these capabilities, enza aims to help its clients reduce transaction costs — a critical factor in reaching unbanked and underbanked populations.
The $6.75m seed round announced in March 2025 was notable for being enza’s first external investment. The round was co-led by Algebra Ventures, an Egyptian venture capital firm, and Quona Capital, a global investor focused on emerging markets fintech.
At the time of the funding, enza said it would deploy capital to accelerate expansion across key African markets and deepen existing partnerships. The Ghana licence represents a tangible outcome of that strategy.
Tarek Assaad, managing partner at Algebra Ventures, said at the time of the investment that enza’s leadership team had “an impressive track record of starting, growing and exiting fintech businesses across the continent”. Johan Bosini, partner at Quona Capital, cited the potential for “significant impact driving financial inclusion”.
Africa is estimated to have more than 60 million small and medium-sized enterprises with limited access to formal financial services, alongside a large unbanked population. Digital payments have been one of the fastest-growing segments of the continent’s technology sector, driven by mobile adoption and regulatory reform.
However, the space has also become highly competitive, with margins compressing as more players enter. Successful operators have increasingly relied on value-added services — such as data analytics, lending and business management tools — to supplement transaction revenues.
enza’s ability to differentiate will depend on whether its combination of regional expertise and technology can deliver lower costs or better reliability than existing providers. The company has not yet disclosed pricing or specific customer commitments in Ghana.
The coming months will show whether enza can convert regulatory approval into commercial traction. Its first customer launches, scheduled for mid-2026, will provide an early indication of demand.
For Ghana’s fintech sector, enza’s entry is further evidence of sustained investor interest despite intensifying competition. Whether the market can support additional infrastructure players — and at what margins — remains an open question.