The following is an in-depth analysis of the fintech and wider digital economic development of African nation Togo.
Togo’s most interesting fintech company started with motorcycle taxis. When Gozem launched in Lomé in 2018, its proposition was relatively straightforward: bring the ride-hailing model to a West African city where motorcycle taxis were already part of everyday transportation.
It did not stay a transport company for long. Deliveries followed. Then e-commerce. Then financial services.
Today, Gozem Money allows customers to make payments, transfer funds, pay bills and manage money through the same application they can use to book transportation or order goods. Its evolution reflects something broader happening across Togo.
The country is not one of Africa’s largest economies and Lomé cannot compete with Lagos, Nairobi or Johannesburg for fintech investment. Yet mobile money has expanded rapidly, government services are becoming more digital and a new regional instant-payment system is beginning to connect Togo more closely with seven neighbouring West African economies.
Togo’s fintech opportunity may therefore come not from its size, but from its position within a much larger regional market.
Lomé has always looked beyond Togo
Togo is a narrow country of around 10 million people stretching from the Gulf of Guinea north towards Burkina Faso.
Its geography has helped make Lomé an important regional trading and logistics centre. The Port of Lomé handles goods destined not only for Togo but also landlocked countries across West Africa, while the capital hosts the headquarters of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated and the West African Development Bank (BOAD).
Agriculture, trade, transport, logistics, manufacturing and services remain important contributors to the economy.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects real gross domestic product (GDP) to expand by around 5 per cent this year, with the population reaching approximately 10 million.
Togo nevertheless remains a relatively low-income economy. IMF-based estimates put GDP per capita at roughly $1,340.
This combination-strong economic growth but comparatively low household incomes-makes inexpensive digital financial services particularly relevant.
Mobile money arrived before digital banking
For many Togolese consumers, the transition towards digital finance did not begin with a bank account. It began with a mobile telephone.
TMoney, operated by Yas Togo, and Flooz, associated with Moov Africa Togo, have become two of the country’s principal mobile-money services. Customers can use mobile money to transfer funds, purchase airtime, pay bills and increasingly complete merchant transactions.
The model matters because conventional branch banking has never reached every part of the population. Mobile networks have considerably wider distribution. An agent equipped with a telephone can provide basic financial services without requiring the infrastructure of a conventional bank branch.
Togo demonstrated the importance of this infrastructure during the COVID-19 pandemic through Novissi, a government cash-transfer programme that distributed emergency assistance digitally to vulnerable citizens. The programme showed that mobile money was no longer merely a commercial payment service. It could also become infrastructure for social protection.
Togo is building its own super-app story
Gozem represents a different stage of that evolution. The company began in Togo before expanding into other African markets, gradually transforming from ride-hailing into what it describes as an African super-app.
Through one application, users can access transportation, delivery, shopping and financial services.
Gozem Money takes that model into fintech. Customers can fund a wallet using mobile money, cash or bank transfers before using the balance for transfers, QR payments, bills and services within the wider Gozem ecosystem.
This is particularly interesting in the Togolese context. Instead of asking consumers to download a financial application from a company they have never encountered, Gozem can introduce financial services through an application customers may already use for transportation or deliveries.
The journey from motorcycle taxi to digital wallet illustrates how fintech can emerge from outside the traditional financial sector.
The biggest change may come from Dakar
Togo does not control its monetary policy independently. It is one of eight members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), sharing the CFA franc and the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) with Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger and Senegal.
For fintech, this can be an advantage. On 30th September last year, the BCEAO officially launched its Interoperable Instant Payment Platform, known as PI-SPI. The system is intended to allow instant transfers between participating banks, microfinance institutions, electronic-money issuers and payment providers across the monetary union.
Togo was among the member states included at launch, and the BCEAO published an expanded list of authorised PI-SPI participants this past April.
The significance goes far beyond faster domestic transfers. A Togolese fintech potentially operates within a financial market spanning eight countries and well over 100 million people. That dramatically changes the economics of building financial technology in a country with a relatively small domestic population.
Interoperability could solve mobile money’s biggest weakness
West Africa’s mobile money revolution has been impressive but fragmented. Consumers may hold accounts with different providers, while transferring money between networks or across borders can be more complicated and expensive than sending money within the same ecosystem.
PI-SPI is designed to reduce those barriers. If implementation succeeds, a consumer using one participating provider could send money instantly to someone using another financial institution without both needing accounts within the same closed network.
For merchants, this could eventually mean accepting payments from customers regardless of their bank or wallet. For fintech companies, common infrastructure reduces the need to build separate connections with every financial institution. The future of Togolese fintech may consequently depend as much on regional infrastructure as domestic innovation.
Digital government remains part of the equation
Togo has also placed digitalisation at the centre of its wider development strategy. The government has invested in digital public services, identification, connectivity and electronic administration as it seeks to modernise interactions between citizens and the state.
The experience of Novissi demonstrated how combining digital identity, mobile technology and electronic payments can enable government assistance to reach people quickly. Those same foundations can eventually support broader financial inclusion.
A citizen who can establish their identity digitally is easier to onboard into regulated financial services. A small business that receives electronic payments begins creating a financial history. That history can eventually support access to formal credit.
Looking ahead
Togo is unlikely to challenge Nigeria or Kenya for the title of Africa’s largest fintech ecosystem. It does not need to.
Its advantage may lie in combining widespread mobile money with a strategically important capital, regional financial institutions and access to WAEMU’s increasingly integrated payment infrastructure.
Gozem demonstrates that a company founded in Lomé can expand from transportation into financial services and beyond Togo’s borders. PI-SPI could make that regional approach considerably easier for the next generation of fintechs.
For Togo, the opportunity is no longer simply putting financial services onto a telephone. It is connecting those telephones-and the businesses behind them-to a West African digital economy far larger than Togo itself.
The post Togo: From Motorcycle Taxis to a Digital Financial Economy appeared first on The Fintech Times.
