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\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\nIt\u2019s Day 1 at Moonshot 2026! \u2600\ufe0f<\/strong><\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk at Moonshot!\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u2019ve been reading our stories. Now, we\u2019d love to hear yours.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re attending Moonshot today, we\u2019re inviting TC Daily readers to sit down with members of the TechCabal newsroom for a conversation.<\/p>\n Bring us an African tech story you\u2019re trying to understand, a question you\u2019ve been meaning to ask, or even a take of ours you disagree with. We\u2019d love to talk about it.<\/p>\n We\u2019re setting aside a few 15-minute slots at the TechCabal booth on October 28 and 29. Pick a time that works for you, tell us what you\u2019d like to discuss, and we\u2019ll see you there.<\/p>\n Book a conversation with us<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Read smart insights about Francophone Africa\u2019s tech ecosystem\u2014weekly.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n FirstRand has spent about 14 years window-shopping Kenya\u2019s banking sector. The South African banking group may finally be ready to buy<\/a>.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/strong> FirstRand, the parent company of First National Bank (FNB) and Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), has stepped up its search for a Kenyan lender. Mary Vilakazi, the bank\u2019s chief executive officer, said the group would rather buy a smaller bank at the right price and grow it than pay a premium for one of Kenya\u2019s biggest lenders.<\/p>\n No target has been named. FirstRand is also looking beyond banking at businesses such as insurance and investment banking as it tries to build a broader East African operation.<\/p>\n Explain like I\u2019m new here:<\/strong> FirstRand is not new to Kenya. In 2012, it opened<\/a> a representative office in Nairobi, mainly through RMB, to arrange infrastructure and project-finance deals. But a representative office cannot take deposits or run a full retail bank.<\/p>\n Even then, FirstRand said it wanted to buy a mid-sized Kenyan lender. It never did. High valuations made acquisitions difficult, so the group spent years operating on the market\u2019s edges instead.<\/p>\n Between the lines:<\/strong> Kenyan banks made KES 241.65 billion ($1.9 billion) in combined profits last year, up 16.3%. At the same time, smaller lenders are under pressure to build enough capital to meet a KES 10 billion ($77 million) minimum by 2032, which could create more willing sellers.<\/p>\n FirstRand therefore does not need to win a bidding war for a trophy bank. Buying a smaller lender would give it a banking licence, deposits, and customers, then let it add FNB\u2019s retail products and RMB\u2019s corporate business over time.<\/p>\n Zoom out:<\/strong> South Africa\u2019s banks are crowding into Kenya. Nedbank has completed<\/a> its 66% acquisition of NCBA, while Standard Bank already operates Stanbic and is looking for more scale.<\/p>\n FirstRand has watched Kenya for more than a decade. The interesting part now is whether rising consolidation finally produces a bank at a price it is willing to pay.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Pay with OPay is live on Fincra. Customers approve payments straight from their OPay wallet, and you get confirmation back on your site. Available now for NGN collections! Upgrade your business today with<\/strong> Fincra pay with OPay<\/a>. Safaricom fired<\/a> 118 employees for fraud in the year to March, roughly one every three days. It is the fourth year in a row that the number has risen at Kenya\u2019s largest telecom company and M-PESA\u2019s operator.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/strong> Dismissals jumped from 113 in the previous year. Safaricom also issued three disciplinary warnings and referred 14 cases to law enforcement. The misconduct included theft, falsifying company records, and unauthorised access to customer call records.<\/p>\n Safaricom separately recovered KES 953 million ($7.4 million) in inflated commissions paid to agents after its monitoring systems flagged irregular payments. The company has not linked those recoveries directly to the 118 employees who were fired.<\/p>\n Explain like I\u2019m new here:<\/strong> Fraud is particularly sensitive at Safaricom because the company sits on much more than phone records. M-Pesa processed KES 41.68 trillion ($323 billion) across 46.4 billion transactions in the year to March. Employees, dealers and agents can therefore access customer identities, SIM registrations and a payments network used by tens of millions of people.<\/p>\n Safaricom has dealt with insider fraud for years, including unauthorised system access, fraudulent SIM swaps and misuse of M-PESA processes. It has steadily added automated monitoring and machine-learning tools to catch suspicious activity.<\/p>\n Between the lines:<\/strong> More dismissals do not automatically mean fraud is getting worse. Safaricom has expanded the operations its fraud reporting covered in recent years, while better analytics can uncover misconduct that previously went unnoticed.<\/p>\n A more useful measure is whether actual losses and successful attacks fall. Safaricom says its new SIM-swap system, which runs 18 automated checks before a line can be replaced, has already cut fraudulent swaps by 65%.<\/p>\n What to watch:<\/strong> Safaricom is increasingly taking sensitive decisions away from individual employees and agents and putting them into automated systems. If those controls work, future fraud reports should eventually show more than people getting caught. They should show fewer successful fraud attempts in the first place.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n You already have a great product. With MyCover.ai, create tailored insurance for your customers across fintech, e-commerce, logistics and more, built around your product, and their needs.<\/strong>\u00a0Get started here<\/strong><\/a>.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n On October 19, Moniepoint, a Nigerian fintech unicorn, informed employees of an internal restructuring <\/a>affecting roles across backend, frontend, mobile, quality assurance, and product management. The company says some positions will become redundant as it moves to smaller teams that own products from start to finish. Moniepoint has offered affected employees five months\u2019 salary to leave voluntarily, while saying it will first look for suitable roles elsewhere in the business. The company has not disclosed how many employees will be affected.\u00a0<\/p>\n Explain like I\u2019m new here<\/strong>: Moniepoint became a unicorn<\/a> in 2024 after raising $110 million, bought a 78% stake<\/a> in Kenya\u2019s Sumac Microfinance Bank in March, and says its subsidiaries now process more than $400 billion in annual digital payments. In October, one employee said the company hired more than 120 people, while Moniepoint has previously said it was struggling to fill hundreds of senior technical roles. However, in August, Moniepoint phased out <\/a>MonieWorld, its UK-Nigeria remittance product, less than 18 months after launch.\u00a0<\/p>\n Why the restructuring? <\/strong>The fintech says the restructuring is part of a regular strategic review as the business moves into its next growth stage. It is moving to a platform-group model, where smaller teams own specific product areas, and it is also creating platform architect roles to oversee the shared technology underneath those teams. The restructuring and growth reflect a company still expanding, but becoming more selective about where it puts people and money.<\/p>\n The bigger picture<\/strong>: Moniepoint is also joining a tech-industry shift towards smaller teams. Block, the parent company of Square and Cash App, cut about 40% of its workforce earlier this year, citing AI and a leaner organisational structure. Jumia<\/a> and Zap Africa<\/a> have also tied workforce changes to efficiency and AI. Moniepoint says AI is not the reason for this restructuring, although the company has discussed internally how AI could streamline product-management work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \n True scale demands moving beyond surface-level integrations to robust execution. We\u2019ve filtered the noise out of Moonshot 2026, optimising the conference strictly for high-calibre connections between startup founders, global financial operators, enterprise leaders and individuals rewiring Africa\u2019s technical frameworks. Join us on October 28 & 29, 2026. Stablecoins are having their moment in African payments, and Circle, the company behind USDC, is backing the infrastructure that wants to make them actually useful.<\/p>\n What happened?<\/strong> CrissCross, a South African cross-border payments company, has received<\/a> an undisclosed investment from Circle Ventures, Circle\u2019s corporate venture arm. The investment was made through CrissCross\u2019s parent company, Stitch Group. The money will help CrissCross expand its payment connections and liquidity across Africa, while building out stablecoin settlement for enterprise customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n Explain like I\u2019m new here:<\/strong> Stablecoins such as USDC are digital tokens designed to maintain a stable value against a currency, usually the US dollar. That makes them useful for moving dollar value between markets. African fintechs are beginning to build around this idea.<\/p>\n Flutterwave announced<\/a> a Circle Ventures investment in July and added USDC settlement to its payments platform. Onafriq has also been working with Circle on regulated stablecoin settlement across its network of more than 40 African markets. CrissCross partnered<\/a> with Velocity in October to connect institutional stablecoin liquidity to local collections and FX across more than 30 African markets.<\/p>\n Why Circle is interested:<\/strong> Every new payment platform that builds USDC into its infrastructure potentially creates another route for the stablecoin to move through the financial system. Sub-Saharan Africa also received more than $205 billion<\/a> in on-chain crypto value between July 2024 and June 2025.<\/p>\n CrissCross says it operates across more than 30 markets and supports more than 20 currencies. The investment should help it deepen those local connections and give enterprises more ways to move between stablecoins and local currencies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Source:<\/p>\n \n Coin Name\n <\/p>\n<\/th>\n \n Current Value\n <\/p>\n<\/th>\n \n Day\n <\/p>\n<\/th>\n \n Month\n <\/p>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n \u2013 0.30% <\/p>\n<\/td>\n \u2013 5.46%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n \u2013 2.19%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n \u2013 14.03%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n \n \u2013 2.20%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n \u2013 19.85%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n \u2013 1.51%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n \u2013 13.17%\n <\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n \n * Data as of 06.49 AM WAT, October 28, 2026.\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \nWritten by:<\/strong> Emmanuel Nwosu and Yemi Kareem\n<\/p>\n \nEdited by:<\/strong> Emmanuel Nwosu & Ganiu Oloruntade\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \nSign up for our insightful newsletters on the business and economy of tech in Africa.\n<\/p>\n \nP:S If you\u2019re often missing TC Daily in your inbox, check your Promotions folder and move any edition of TC Daily from \u201cPromotions\u201d to your \u201cMain\u201d or \u201cPrimary\u201d folder and TC Daily will always come to you.\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"today's](\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udfff\u200d\ud83d\ude80TechCabal-Daily-\u2013-Safaricom-cleans-house-TechCabal-2.jpg\")
\n<\/div>\nFirstRand goes bank shopping in Kenya, again<\/h3>\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/c76c7bbc41.mjedge.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/tc\/2025\/08\/Mary-Vilakazi.webp\")
<\/a>\n Upgrade your business today
\n <\/h5>\n
\n ![](\"https:\/\/c76c7bbc41.mjedge.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/tc\/2026\/10\/image-153.webp\")
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
\n <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSafaricom fires 118 employees over fraud<\/h3>\n
\n![](\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udfff\u200d\ud83d\ude80TechCabal-Daily-\u2013-Safaricom-cleans-house-TechCabal-3.jpg\")
<\/a>\n More value with Mycoverai
\n <\/h5>\n
\n ![](\"https:\/\/c76c7bbc41.mjedge.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/tc\/2026\/10\/unnamed-50.webp\")
\n <\/a><\/p>\nMoniepoint is restructuring its engineering and product teams<\/h3>\n
\n ![](\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udfff\u200d\ud83d\ude80TechCabal-Daily-\u2013-Safaricom-cleans-house-TechCabal-4.jpg\")
<\/a>\n Don\u2019t miss Moonshot 2026 for anything in the world!
\n <\/h5>\n
\n ![](\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udfff\u200d\ud83d\ude80TechCabal-Daily-\u2013-Safaricom-cleans-house-TechCabal-5.jpg\")
\n <\/a><\/p>\n
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\n Get your ticket<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSouth Africa\u2019s CrissCross gets Circle backing for stablecoin expansion<\/h3>\n
\n ![](\"https:\/\/c76c7bbc41.mjedge.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/tc\/2026\/10\/1738783573675.webp\")
<\/a>CRYPTO TRACKER<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
The World Wide Web3<\/h3>\n
![\"CoinMarketCap](\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/\ud83d\udc68\ud83c\udfff\u200d\ud83d\ude80TechCabal-Daily-\u2013-Safaricom-cleans-house-TechCabal-6.jpg\")
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<\/span>Bitcoin<\/td>\n$79,869<\/td>\n \n \n \n \n<\/span>Ether<\/td>\n$2,390 <\/td>\n \n \n \n \n<\/span>XRP<\/td>\n$1.31<\/td>\n \n \n \n <\/span>Solana<\/td>\n$103.84<\/td>\n \n \n Opportunities<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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\n<\/div>\nWant more of TechCabal?<\/h6>\n
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