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Safaricom adds voice control to m-Pesa
In what the company hailed as a world-first, its customers will be able to check balances before and after making transactions by dialling a number from the handset connected to their account and entering a code.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Investment = Inclusion: Can Fintech, With a Boost from Investors, Level the Playing Field for the Unbanked in Africa?
Fintech – particularly mobile finance – is increasingly vital to Africa's economic growth. But despite the continent's impressive mobile money penetration, much of its population remains unbanked or underbanked. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see another trend developing in tandem with Africans’ embrace of fintech: namely, investors’ embrace of African fintech companies. Iftin Fatah at OPIC explores why more investment means more digital financial inclusion.
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Why America could miss out big time on India’s fintech revolution
There’s an old trope in the West that India is like Indian trains — exotic, lurching and slow. But tropes can be bad as a business strategy — and this trope is causing American companies to miss out on Indian moonshots and trillion-dollar opportunities.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Mastercard unveils mobile order and pay system for Nairobi kiosk owners
Kionect, technology from Mastercard, provides a digital log of transaction data that qualifies these micro-retailers for loans to stock inventory from Musoni, a regional micro-finance provider. With every loan that is paid on time, the kiosk owner has the opportunity to take out a larger loan for a longer term and further contribute to the growth of their business.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech, mobile finance
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John Mcafee and Kohli Brothers all set to launch India’s biggest blockchain company
BitIndia Wallet is a blockchain wallet, which is a reorganised platform for the people of India, where they can store and make payments via digital currencies. BitIndia has its eyes set on bringing more Indians into the blockchain, by making them aware about cryptocurrencies, and offering a reliable and assured platform for the trade of blockchain and digital currencies in India.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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WorldRemit nabs $40M at a $670M valuation to boost its money transfer business
WorldRemit, a London-based startup with some 2 million users that offers a quick way for people to send money to each other with a focus on developing markets, has raised more funds to help it take on the likes of Western Union in the remittances market, estimated by the World Bank to be worth some $596 million globally this year, and ramp its user number to 10 million.
- Categories
- Finance
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Partners Release Study On Attitudes To Mobile Money In Africa
The study focuses on four countries of varying degrees of DFS market maturity: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Zambia. It is a knowledge product of the Partnership for Financial inclusion, a $37.4 million joint initiative of IFC and the Mastercard Foundation, to advance financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Stealthy’ Saving: Building on Payroll Credit to Automate Savings
Basic savings accounts are essential to helping people build assets, and to establishing their relationship with financial institutions. But customers often fail to open or use these accounts – even when they have the money and the intention of saving it. Acreimex, a savings & credit cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico, worked with BFA to find an innovative, "stealthy" way to introduce savings to its existing payroll loan customers. The results of their pilot program were intriguing.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology