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The Technology Trade-off: Mobile tech boosts financial access but limits engagement. Can it also help build banking relationships?
Financial access is at an all-time high, and it’s growing fast. Yet account dormancy rates for the newly banked range from 60-90 percent. And though mobile technology has made more services scalable, it has also limited banks’ ability to build deeper relationships with their customers. But Juntos Finanzas believes mobile tech may also hold a solution to this problem.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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The Rise of the Cheap Smartphone : And what it could mean for BoP finance, connectivity
According an estimate from Gartner, by 2018 nine out of ten phones will be smartphones. If this comes to pass, it may require a substantial rethink about the delivery of mobile financial services to consumers in developing markets, where up until now the feature phone has dominated.
- Categories
- Technology, Telecommunications
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Marketing the ‘Real Cool Honey’ Sachets: Launch lessons from Asali Poa in Kenya
Find a product-market fit and then execute flawlessly. Both are tough and have high risks that you need to overcome with the launch process. Here are a few big lessons from Honey Care Africa’s little sachet of honey, which we call Asali Poa (translated as "real cool honey"). We launched the product commercially in 2014 in Nairobi and currently reach 3,000 points of purchase.
- Categories
- Technology
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Open Eyes, Open Source: Peek’s low-cost ophthalmoscope looks to gain traction, expertise through collaborations
Peek Retina, a low-cost ophthalmoscope adapter, will operate on a split pricing model. NGOs and health institutions operating in low-income countries will be able to purchase the adapter at a reduced price, while it will be sold at a higher price in high-resource settings.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Weekly Roundup – 12/6/14: Overcoming paywalls, increasing information accessibility in the pursuit of a healthier planet
There’s been a good bit of discussion recently about the accessibility of health care information; specifically, the timely sharing of research on such topics as Ebola.
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- Health Care, Technology, Telecommunications
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Israeli Innovation Meets Rwandan Entrepreneurship: High-tech for Western markets is still the main focus of Israeli startups, but that’s slowly changing
Israel has the second-highest concentration of start-up companies after Silicon Valley, but most of this entrepreneurial energy has been focused on Western markets. This is slowly changing, with projects like kLab in Rwanda, writes Caylee Talpert, deputy director of the Pears Innovation for International Development Program at Tel Aviv University.
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- Technology, Telecommunications
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NexThought Monday – Creators, Not Just Consumers: Facebook and other global players are bringing transformative digital technology to the BoP – but will local economies benefit?
A budding tech industry can help transform emerging markets, says Chris Locke. But as global powerhouses like Facebook and Google focus on the BoP, will they build local jobs and economies, or act like digital extractive industries, mining personal data and using it to create value elsewhere?
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- Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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NexThought Monday – Financial Inclusion and the Internet of Things: How Smart Machines Can Benefit the Poor
The Internet of Things refers to the use of technology to automate data transfer between objects via the Internet. It’s billed as a disruptive technology of the next decade, with applications that range from home automation to wearable fitness devices. But it also has great potential to benefit the poor, by enabling payment mechanisms that let the underbanked access basic products and services.
- Categories
- Energy, Technology, Telecommunications
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