This post was written by Michaela Binda, part of the MEST Africa team.

Inspired by Mpesa, a peer to peer transfer system, Mary Mwangi saw an opportunity to create a customer to business transfer system. Through Data Integrated Ltd (DIL), customers can “buy goods with their mobile money and the merchants could collect and store the sales data into a payment integrated system,” Mwangi said. This end-to-end, customized, enterprise payment solution for African SMEs automates payment services through an integrated, reliable, secure and easy to use platform.

For the last 6 years, DIL has been building traction, especially throughout the transport sector, to address challenges facing the “first mile” of financial inclusion. What started as a simple payment system that could receive mobile money transactions and provide the merchants with a dashboard to view transactions in real time has grown to the point of processing over 5 million transactions and nearly $40M in 2017.

With the partnerships they are building with regional banks such as Ecobank, UBA and Equity Bank, as well as telecom companies such as MTN, DIL hopes to provide payment solutions across Africa. In the next five years they “intend to be the leading innovative payment solution provider in the region and beyond, allowing Africa’s financial backbone to fast adapt to mobile/cashless payment solutions,” says Mwangi. Their aim is to “solve daily local business problems while providing services that benefit the small business payment data solution requirements.”

DIL was the winner of the Kenya regional competition for the MEST Africa Challenge and will now get the opportunity to attend the MEST Africa Summit in Cape Town on June 18–20, in order to compete in a final round of pitching in front of a crowd of esteemed global investors, entrepreneurs, and executives in the African tech space. The winners of this final round will gain up to $50k in equity investment. Mwangi is looking forward to the chance to win this as well as the opportunity to network with the partners, technical advisors, and stakeholders they need in order to scale into new markets and expand their reach.

Want DIL to win the MEST Africa Challenge? Share and like our post on social media to upvote the team and route for Kenya to win. Learn more about the MEST Africa Summit and Data Integrated Limited.

Thanks to MEST Africa Summit partners Facebook, MTN, GHL Bank, VC4A and Kenya Airways for helping to bring the MEST Africa Challenge to life!