M-Pesa is far from the only FinTech innovation happening in Africa, but its value proposition — moving money through the mobile phone — is central to innovation efforts on the continent.

Mobility is transforming financial services in Africa more dramatically than perhaps anywhere else, since it allows companies to leapfrog expensive infrastructure investments built elsewhere.

Two US-based startups, Regalii and Mozido, are working on solving a problem for many Africans — paying their electric bills. Why is paying the electric bill a problem? Because of infrastructure weakness, many utility customers must travel miles to deliver cash to their provider or authorized agent to keep the lights on (and phones charged).

Today, Regalii announced it would begin international remittances to Nigeria, while Mozido is taking on prepaid utility top-ups on the other side of the continent, in Zimbabwe.

JPMorgan veteran Edrizio De La Cruz founded Regalii in 2013 to enable remittances to the Dominican Republic via SMS. The service has since spread across much of Latin America, as well as the Philippines and India, and in the process found a specialized niche.

“Of the money flowing from the ‘first world’ to the developing world, 20% is bill payment,” Naysawn Naderi, Regalii’s CTO, told Bank Innovation. “Picking up wads of cash then traveling with it can be a dangerous thing.” And then the money needs to get to the biller, who often has limited ways of accepting payments.

Regalii quickly pivoted to provide a cross boarder bill payment service to customers in the US.  They did so by building direct relationships with utility companies, in the developing world and now exist in 10 different countries.

Subscribers on the Regalii platform receive SMS reminders to pay bills when they come due across the border. Regalii then enables digital payments through third parties to get the funds to billers. Payments occur in near real-time, and both the account holder and the utility company are notified instantly. Regalii is a white-label platform powering bill payment for 18 different remittance partners. Since it operates as an API platform, banks can leverage the service to offer remote bill payments to their customer in their web and mobile apps.

Meanwhile, Mozido, currently one of the best-funded mobile payments startups, put its money to work today with the acquisition of Nettcash, a prepaid mobile payment service. It will use Nettcash to provide “Zimbabwe’s first mobile wallet that includes prepaid utility services,” it announced.

Michael Liberty, founder of Mozido, said in a press release, “Mozido’s NettCash mobile prepaid utility service has made it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to simply top up their electricity meters whenever they need, instantly from their mobile phones.”

DIfferent models, different companies, but it is intriguing to see two U.S. startups take on bill payment in Africa on the same day.

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