ClickPesa
“Can a Bank of Tanzania-licensed payment gateway become the unified payments and compliance infrastructure layer for Tanzania's SMEs and microfinance institutions?”
Founded2019
HQDar es Salaam, Tanzania
FoundersRick Groothuizen, Richard Lema
IndustryInfrastructure / Payments
The story
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.
Product timeline
2019
ClickPesa founded in Tanzania to facilitate digital payment transactions for businesses in Africa.· pivot
2020
Obtained Bank of Tanzania payment system license (NBPSL No. 0000-31) enabling regulated payment services across mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.· banking
2022
Launched payout disbursement services to 30+ African countries via bank accounts and mobile money wallets.· banking
2023
Launched Compliance-as-a-Service (CaaS) KYC and credit reference check solutions for microfinance institutions (MFIs).· banking
2024
Launched BillPay product enabling invoice-based control number payments across mobile money, CRDB bank channels, and TanQR/Lipa Namba.· banking
2025
Released BillPay APIs for Invoices and Customers, enabling programmatic assignment of payment control numbers from merchant systems.· banking
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by ClickPesa
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
3 layers disclosed in ClickPesa’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
ClickPesa (self-operated)
Lending
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
4 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.