Each year, the AFI Inclusive Fintech Showcase spotlights companies which are using digital innovation to boost access to quality financial services in low-income communities. ShopOkoa, from Kenya, won 3rd place at the 2025 Showcase.

ShopOkoa, a community banking platform that connects small businesses to customers, and which allows customers to save money and make purchases, already has over 10,000 merchants and 50,000 community members.

At the 2025 AFI Global Policy Forum, ShopOkoa CEO, Kelvin Mulama, explained how ShopOkoa is working with Kenyan higher education institutions. “We are helping them to digitize student welfare programs, so that they can easily distribute cash assistance and meal subsidies to students with disabilities. We help schools transition from manual and traditional paper methods of student verifiication for welfare support.”

“Our infrastructure has AI capabilities to analyze data from a vast range of student admission data, in order to identify the eligible students. We issue universities with prepaid card infrastructure, which they can use to allocate different expenditure limits, based on the vulnerability of students and their backgrounds.”

Discover all five of the 2025 AFI Inclusive Fintech Showcase finalists.