FenanPay Steps into Ethiopia’s Competitive Fintech Market

FenanPay has become the latest fintech to receive a commercialization license from the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE). The startup, which entered its piloting phase in October 2024, has spent the past year testing its products. During this period, it successfully completed more than 2.5 million transactions amounting to 1.5 billion Birr.

As a latecomer to Ethiopia’s fintech sector, FenanPay is seeking to establish itself in the market through a progressive pricing strategy, offering commission fees that can drop as low as zero depending on the size of the transaction.

FenanPay is developed by BitNet Tech Solutions, a local technology company co-founded by Biniam Negessu, the founder of DireTube, an Ethiopian media and entertainment website. Biniam partnered with about a dozen shareholders to establish FenanPay with an initial capital of 5 million Birr.

The Payment Gateway Operator license is the most sought-after license from the NBE since the regulator opened the sector to non-financial institution players in 2020.

In 2025 alone, four companies received piloting permits from the NBE. Currently, there are 11 licensed Payment Gateway Operators in Ethiopia. Six of these companies hold licenses for both online payment gateways and POS services, while the remaining operators are licensed only for online payment gateways.

In contrast, there are only four licensed Payment Instrument Issuers (mobile money operators), which include telebirr and M-Pesa.

However, while the growth of the fintech sector in countries such as Kenya, India, Nigeria, and South Africa has led to the introduction of a wide range of innovative products and services, the diversity of Ethiopia’s fintech sector remains much more limited. Partly due to the low adoption of e-commerce, a significant share of Ethiopia’s payment gateway transactions comes from the betting industry alone.

Against this backdrop, FenanPay is promising to bring new solutions.

“We want to go beyond providing financial services. Our goal is to deliver holistic solutions for our partners and merchants. Beyond payments, we aim to address broader technology needs, including developing custom software,” said Biniam Negessu, Managing Director and Founder of FenanPay.

The startup has also announced merchant app features that address the problems in the current payment confirmation landscape. In addition, FenanPay merchants will gain access to services such as AI-based analytics, restaurant order management, Telegram payment bots, event management, and USSD payments.