Roger Nengwe Ntafam is Bringing Banking to the Unbanked in Francophone Africa

He is the co-founder and CEO of PaySika, a fast-growing fintech company that allows people without a traditional bank account to send, receive, and manage money through mobile apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Messenger.

Roger grew up in Cameroon and later moved to France for higher education.

He studied Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Toulouse (UPSSITECH), where he gained strong technical skills.

He also spent time at the Czech Technical University in Prague as an exchange student, focusing on machine learning and computer vision.

Before starting his business, Roger worked with well-known companies like ExxonMobil, Continental, and the AI Center in Prague, where he built hands-on experience in AI and engineering.

Roger’s journey as an entrepreneur began with a startup called MyMoney in 2019.

It was a financial tool that worked as a chatbot to help people manage their money.

Although the startup didn’t succeed, the experience taught Roger important lessons about building tech products for African markets.

These lessons laid the groundwork for what would later become PaySika.

In 2020, Roger partnered with Stezen Bisselou-Nzengue to create PaySika, a mobile banking service designed for the 80% of people in Francophone Africa who do not have access to traditional banks.

PaySika lets users access financial services directly through apps they already use every day—no need to download a new app or visit a bank.

With PaySika, users can send and receive money, check their account balances, and make online payments using a virtual Visa card—all through messaging apps they already use, like WhatsApp and Telegram.

Downloading a separate app or going to a physical bank is unnecessary.

Everything happens in real time, directly in chat. The aim is simple: to make banking easy, accessible, and affordable for everyone, especially for the millions who are excluded from traditional financial systems.

PaySika has grown quickly since its launch. In 2021, the startup raised €300,000 in early-stage funding from investors in France, the UK, and Nigeria. This helped them launch and expand operations.

In 2023, PaySika joined the Visa Fintech Fast Track program, which gave them tools and support to offer secure payment solutions in Central Africa.

Roger’s passion for building PaySika comes from his own life. As a student in France, he once had trouble paying his tuition because he didn’t have access to a proper bank account. That experience stuck with him and pushed him to solve this problem for others.

Today, Roger is working every day to close the financial gap and give millions of people in Africa access to simple, reliable banking services.