SunPay Solutions, a fintech startup closely tied to Sunshine Investment Group, one of Ethiopia’s largest conglomerates, has had its license revoked by the National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) over a long list of violations.
Two years ago, the company received a two-month pilot permit for payment system operator and point-of-sale operator activities and has not reported on its progress since.
A letter written by Solomon Damtew, Director of the NBE’s Payment and Settlement Systems Directorate, and copied to all banks in the country three weeks ago, cited six violations that led to the license revocation. Failure to appoint a CEO, failure to renew a license, failure to maintain a physical presence and failure to hold a general shareholders’ meeting are some of the transgressions of the NBE’s directives, the Commercial Code and the National Payment System Proclamation that led to action against Sunpay.
“Your payment system operator license for point-of-sale and payment gateway activities has been revoked, effective August 27, 2024,” the letter reads.
Yonas Samuel, the youngest child of business tycoon Samuel Tafesse, was a key figure and major shareholder in the creation of the fintech company. Yonas led Sunshine Investment Group’s foray into the technology sector with ambitions to also enter the ride-hailing and e-commerce scene.
Sunpay debuted with double the 50 million birr capital required by the NBE and became the second company to receive the central bank’s green light for a payment operator license.
The founders announced their intention to become a pillar of the financial technology landscape at the inaugural shareholder meeting held three years ago at the Marriot Executive Apartments.
The ecosystem of tech companies including taxi booking service Sunpick and freight delivery company Sundrop has also collapsed since then. The taxi booking company even found itself embroiled in a high-stakes public dispute with industry giant Feres when drivers claimed they could not install both apps simultaneously.
Feres accused Sunpick of stealing confidential data, driver contact lists, and source code from Feres when it hired a former Feres employee. When Feres drivers installed the Sunpick driver app and signed up, their Feres driver app stopped working. Sunpick exited the market nearly a year later.
However, Sunpay appears to have had some early momentum, thanks in part to its entry into the capital-intensive market, its celebrity backers and its early-money advantages. A tokenization business, store-branded cards, thousands of POS machines and an end-to-end card service were among the now-frozen company’s early fintech aspirations.
Yet the once-promising company failed to respond to the NBE’s written request to explain its compliance failures two months before its license was revoked. It has undergone a series of changes in operating managers and management.
Sources familiar with the matter say Yonas’ rapid expansion into multiple sectors, coupled with a lack of proper planning and professionalism, contributed to the company’s demise.
A shareholder, who spoke to Shega on condition of anonymity, described the company’s internal relations as unprofessional. According to the source, high salaries, excessive benefits and a laid-back atmosphere ultimately led to the fintech’s downfall.
Samuel Tafesse, the investment group’s founder, is widely regarded as the epitome of self-made wealth thanks to a massive real estate and construction portfolio with declared income of more than $100 million per year.
Several attempts to reach Yonas Samuel went unanswered.