When we began shaping this year’s Pulse of Fintech programme, we deliberately started with a different question. Not simply: which panels will attract the biggest audience? But rather: which conversations does Mauritius’s financial services sector most need to have out loud?
For us, an event of this kind earns its place in the calendar only if people leave having understood something they did not understand when they arrived. Networking matters, of course. Transactions matter. But in a market that is now making important choices about open banking, digital assets, credit, data and artificial intelligence, the quality of the conversation matters just as much.
That is why the three panels at Pulse of Fintech 2026 have been built as much around explanation as around opportunity. Each begins with the underlying concept before turning to what it could mean in practice for Mauritius and the wider region.
The agenda is anchored in the Mauritian National Budget 2026–2027 and its ambition for a “Future Ready Economy”: an Open Banking Framework; a regulatory framework for stablecoins and the tokenisation of real-world assets; and a National Fintech Governance Committee tasked with supporting a shared licensing and passporting regime for the region. In other words, this is not a generic fintech agenda imported from elsewhere. It is a conversation shaped by the direction in which Mauritian policy is already moving.
Artificial intelligence runs through all three sessions, not as a standalone theme, but as the layer quietly changing how financial infrastructure, compliance, credit and customer experience are being built.
Open banking and Banking-as-a-Service: who owns the customer relationship?
Open banking starts from a simple premise: a customer’s financial data should, with consent, be portable. It should not remain locked inside the institution that first collected it. Banking-as-a-Service takes that logic further, allowing non-bank fintechs to offer financial products by connecting to the infrastructure of licensed institutions rather than becoming banks themselves.
These models are already established in other African markets. The question for Mauritius is what they require here: where customer data should sit, who carries the regulatory relationship, and how incumbents and challengers can build together rather than compete for the same narrow slice of the market. The panel will also explore how AI is reshaping the infrastructure layer through data standardisation, API orchestration, automated compliance and continuous monitoring.
Panellists: Kolawole Olajide, Co-Founder & CEO, Sava Africa (South Africa); Atul Bhatia, CEO, Blink by Emtel (Mauritius); Florent Masson, CEO, MIPS (Mauritius). Moderator: Ido Sum, Founder, Africa AI Group.
Stablecoins and digital settlement: can new rails ease old constraints?
A stablecoin is a digital token designed to hold a steady value, typically by being pegged to a currency such as the US dollar. That makes it more usable for payment and settlement than more volatile digital assets. For Mauritius, the practical question is clear: can digital settlement rails help businesses move money, manage treasury and address the shortage of hard currency that many feel in day-to-day operations?
The answer is not obvious, and that is precisely why the discussion matters. The panel will examine where these rails could offer genuine relief, where expectations should be tempered, and what regulation and infrastructure Mauritius would need in order to adopt digital settlement safely. AI again sits underneath the discussion, shortening infrastructure build cycles while strengthening real-time fraud detection and transaction monitoring.
Panellists: Greg van der Spuy, Founder, Spendl Money (South Africa); Alon Stern, Co-Founder & CEO, Turnstay (South Africa). Moderator: Maz Chaponda, Co-Founder, CrossFx / Supesa Network (London / Nigeria).
Credit, lending and data: how do we underwrite the underserved?
The third panel focuses on what may be the most consequential question of the day: how credit reaches people and small businesses that traditional underwriting often overlooks. We will compare three approaches: licensed SME credit facilities, merchant-funded lending models built around transaction data, and alternative-data or AI-driven credit scoring that captures signals conventional credit bureaus may miss.
The discussion will ask which models are genuinely transferable to Mauritian SME and consumer segments, and how fintechs, banks, insurers and regulators can share the risk and data that responsible credit expansion requires. We will also bring into the room a proposal Equitable Ventures has put to government: a first-loss guarantee fund designed to absorb an agreed first tranche of losses on qualifying SME lending and give lenders greater confidence to extend credit further down the risk curve.
This is not presented as a finished policy position. It is a proposal we want to stress-test with the people who would ultimately need to make it work.
Panellists: Nehal Helmy, Co-Founder, Flend (Egypt); Wesley Billett, Co-Founder & CEO, Happy Pay (South Africa); Dr Rishi Sookdawoor, Group Officer in Charge & COO, NIC Group (Mauritius). Moderator: Ido Sum, Founder, Africa AI Group.
