“Between 2019 and 2020, our numbers doubled”

The Senegalese fintech InTouch is counting on more than one billion euros in transactions in 2020, driven by the new opportunities created by Covid-19.

Omar Cissé, managing director of In Touch, in Dakar, in November 2019. © Sylvain Cherkaoui for JA

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In 2014, Omar Cissé opened a small shop in the popular district of Parcelles Assainies, in Dakar, and was confronted with a puzzle. The multiplication of mobile payment methods requires it to juggle between fifteen different services.

His solution: to found InTouch, a digital platform bringing together all these services.

With the support of Total and the electronic payments specialist Worldline (now shareholders with 31.6% each), InTouch raised the largest amount of funds in 2017 — 10 million euros — ever carried out by a start-up in French-speaking Africa. Enough to extend to six new markets (Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Mali, Mali, Mali, Guinea, Guinea, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Kenya) and facilitate tens of millions of transfers per year.

For Jeune Afrique, The Senegalese entrepreneur looks back on the group's pan-African ambitions, cybersecurity challenges, and the transformation of uses imposed by the coronavirus.

Jeune Afrique: What was the impact of the pandemic on InTouch?

Omar Cissé : There was a real panic during the month of April. In about ten days, we saw our turnover drop drastically. Extrapolating from this trend, we forecast a 69% drop in our business by July.

Most of our physical points, which distribute telephone credit and allow the payment of water and electricity bills, closed at the start of the pandemic. But we had to keep going. People started buying their food, paying for school, without moving. New customers have therefore joined us online, and the demand for payments has exploded.

With the lockdown, customers we were running after shortly before were finally running after us.

In April, we finally saw a decrease of only 7%. June and July were our best months since we started.

Last year you facilitated 30 million transactions, for a total amount of 580 million euros. What are your predictions for 2020?

This year we should double these numbers. In Senegal, 36% of people have lost their jobs. It's huge. Economic activity has fallen sharply, we can feel this in all our markets. But our volumes continue to increase as payments and the Mobile money are developing. I think that the transformation of uses will continue beyond the pandemic.