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Report: Countries are Broadly Embracing the Opportunities of Fintech to Boost Economic Growth and Inclusion
Financial inclusion is one of the core themes throughout the document. Hundreds of millions of individuals are underbanked or simply unbanked around the world. Fintech can streamline the process in providing fully featured services to these underserved communities.
- Categories
- Finance
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Kenya Regulators Warn MPs on Safaricom Split Bill
The issue of competition in Kenyan market is an issue politicians and regulators have regularly investigated over the last two years, with calls to spin-out mobile money units nothing new.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Social Stock Exchange Idea Highlights India’s Move Away From Foreign Aid
Proposal could provide cheaper funding for charities, says finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, but critics warn against greater government control of welfare projects.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Opera Founded Startup OPay Raises $50m for Mobile Finance in Nigeria
Opera founded OPay in 2018 on the popularity of its internet search engine. Opera’s web-browser has ranked No. 2 in usage in Africa, after Chrome, the last four years.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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How Artificial Intelligence Can Simplify International Development Research: An Intriguing Experiment (Involving NextBillion)
International development professionals must often spend a great deal of time trying to keep up with news, trends and research about their area of activity – and this requires a lot of manual labor. But much of this can now be automated and aided by artificial intelligence (AI). Jacob Rosen and Ashirul Amin at BFA explore how they used AI to sort and categorize a vast amount of development-focused content online, using NextBillion's 5,000+ article library as a test case. The results of their experiment show how AI can help people reduce time and labor and learn more efficiently.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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MTN, Sanlam Insurtech Partnership May Face Stumbling Blocks
Arthur Goldstuck, founder of World Wide Worx and ICT analyst, points out that with mobile money having failed repeatedly in SA, mobile insurance offers no guarantee of success, in a country with a large number of uninsured populations.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Mastercard Debuts Card to Act as ID, Payment for Underserved
Members of underserved populations don’t always have credit cards. City Key is Mastercard’s effort to help cities distribute services and benefits by creating a tool that can act as an ID, payment card or access pass.
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- Finance
- Region
- North America
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India’s NiYO ‘Neo-Bank’ Raises $35m to Help Blue-Collar Workers Access Financial Services
NiYO Solutions serves as a “neo-bank” that relies on traditional financial institutions (Yes Bank and DCB banks, in its case) and offers to customers additional features such as lending and insurance. Blue-collared employees in India (and many other markets) continue to struggle in availing crucial financial services from banks that typically reserve them for the privileged segment.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia