“Can a Bank of Tanzania-licensed payment gateway become the unified payments and compliance infrastructure layer for Tanzania's SMEs and microfinance institutions?”
Founded in 2019 as a payment gateway for Tanzanian businesses, ClickPesa secured a Bank of Tanzania payment system license and expanded to offer unified mobile money, card (Mastercard/Visa/UnionPay), and bank-transfer collection and disbursement. The company subsequently broadened its target market to include microfinance institutions (MFIs), adding Compliance-as-a-Service KYC and credit reference bureau integration. More recently it launched BillPay — an invoice control number system — deepening its positioning as infrastructure for SME and MFI payment automation in Tanzania.
ClickPesa processes payments through ClickPesa (self-operated).
ClickPesa integrates with QuickBooks, Xero and ERPNext.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 3 layers in ClickPesa's stack: Payments / PSP (ClickPesa (self-operated)); Lending (Debt funding for MFIs and SMEs (ClickPesa Debt Fund)); Accounting (QuickBooks, Xero and ERPNext).
ClickPesa was founded by Rick Groothuizen and Richard Lema and is founded in 2019, headquartered in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Get a read on where your own stack stands against ClickPesa and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.