Mastercard Selects MoovnPay for Start Path’s Emerging Fintech Program

News World

Published by Stephen Oluwadara at September 29, 2025

A Platform Built from Necessity, Driven by Vision

MoovnPay was ideated after Moovn’s expansion into African markets in 2017, including Tanzania and Kenya. During this growth, the ride-hailing arm of the business faced a familiar challenge: the widespread reliance on cash-based transactions, which complicated revenue collection. This pain point sparked the vision for MoovnPay, a digital payments platform designed to solve local realities while scaling globally.

“We were faced with a big question coming from America, which was a highly digital payment environment, to Africa, a very heavily cash-based environment,” said Godwin Gabriel, Group CEO of Moovn Technologies, to UrbanGeekz in an exclusive interview.

So they built MoovnPay, an integrated fintech platform that ensures secure, instant, and borderless transactions across Moovn’s ride-share, delivery, marketplace, and peer-to-peer payment services. A fintech product that began as an operational necessity thus grew into Moovn’s mission to empower communities and reshape the future of financial inclusion.

What Mastercard’s Program Means for MoovnPay

Being part of Start Path is a game-changer for MoovnPay, unlocking new avenues for growth and expansion. With access to Mastercard’s vast network, expertise, and regulatory guidance, MoovnPay is poised to scale rapidly across key markets in North America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.

This partnership lends credibility to MoovnPay’s innovative solutions, affirming its product-market fit and commitment to delivering impactful results. Mastercard’s selection is a testament to MoovnPay’s potential and dedication to pushing boundaries in the fintech space.

Moreover, the collaboration opens doors for co-innovation and shared advancements in payments infrastructure, fintech initiatives, and cutting-edge technologies. By working together, MoovnPay and Mastercard can drive meaningful progress, shaping the future of payments and financial services. This synergy will propel MoovnPay forward, enabling it to make a lasting impact in the industry.

“Being selected by Mastercard to join the Start Path program is not just validation but an opportunity. An opportunity to deliver financial tools that are fast, secure, and open to communities largely excluded from financial access. With MoovnPay, we’re not just enabling payments; we’re also transforming economies and empowering communities so everyone can participate in the digital economy,” Gabriel said.

Moovn’s Team

How Moovn Went From a $5,000 Idea to Driving Financial Inclusion

Godwin Gabriel started Moovn in 2014 with only $5,000 in his pocket and a wide idea to go head-to-head with established ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. After struggling to find someone with the necessary technical expertise, he decided to build the product himself. Godwin learnt to code from YouTube, tech forums, and online peer-to-peer reviews. Within nine months, the prototype, an Android-based application, was launched.

Rather than going to the saturated mainstream market, the Tanzanian-born founder took an innovative step. “I positioned myself in hotels, convention centres, and large-volume places where I knew that I could trap the traffic.

I knew most people moved from hotels to airports or from airports to hotels and in between. Strategically placing my web application in these positions helped grow revenue, build fast and scale the platform. Moovn currently operates in five countries and nine major cities.

Godwin hopes Mastercard’s Start Path Emerging Fintech can help to accelerate their financial inclusion drive. “We want to ensure people in remote areas across the globe can have equal access to financial tools as anyone in major cities,” he said. With MoovnPay, as its fintech engine, Moovn is powering financial inclusion in underserved markets.

Other companies in the cohort include AraxaTech, Hyperlayer, Kamina, firmly, amnis, Qawn, Save Your Wardrobe, MoovnPay, Pentatonic, Circulae and Circulayo.