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Zippi, a Brazilian Digital Credit Fintech, Raises Us$15.9 Million to Expand Credit Access for Micro and Small Businesses in Brazil
Securitized through FIDC and supported by Tiger Global, the capital will help double the credit offering to underserved entrepreneurs and SMEs.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- credit scoring, fintech, MSMEs, startups
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P4G Awards $3.8 Million to 14 Climate Startups Driving Green Innovation in Emerging Markets
This funding will help these early-stage businesses grow breakthrough solutions making them investment-ready to accelerate green growth in emerging markets.
- Categories
- Energy, Finance, Technology
- Region
- Global
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When AI Gets It Wrong: Lessons from a Women-Centered Design Experiment Highlight the Need for Inclusive GPTs
In emerging markets, women entrepreneurs continue to face systemic barriers to financial inclusion. And as Koheun Lee at CARE explains, ChatGPT and other AI models sometimes contribute to this exclusion, reinforcing societal biases that limit women’s potential for business growth and long-term financial health. She shares insights from CARE's attempt to build a women-centered design GPT — and proposes some practical steps AI users can take to mitigate bias against women when working with mainstream GPTs.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Beyond Shock, Money or Mandate: Why African Banks Aren’t Taking Bold Climate Action — And What it Will Take to Move Forward
Africa is one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world. Yet though climate finance has emerged as a growing solution, African banks have yet to truly ramp up their climate lending. As Carla Legros and Anthony Mbithi argue, one reason for this lack of urgency is that the financial case for this lending has rarely been framed in ways that resonate with how banks operate — namely, as a clear money-making opportunity in the near to medium term. They share a framework for understanding financial institutions' level of engagement in climate finance, providing funders and policymakers with a tool they can use to match their interventions to banks’ institutional reality.
- Categories
- Environment, Finance, Investing
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Trident Raises $2.6 Million to Support Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Digital ID Rollout
DRC Pass aims to enhance financial inclusion and improve public service delivery.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Moving Past the ‘Infrastructure of Hope’: Why Investors, Policymakers and Entrepreneurs Must Build a Modern E-Commerce Ecosystem in Southeast Asia
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for over 95% of all businesses in Southeast Asia, and millions of these entrepreneurs have migrated their hustle online. Yet according to Macy Castillo at Enstack, due to a lack of access to reliable payment options and other tools, they are attempting to build modern e-commerce businesses on a foundation of informal agreements and personal trust: an “infrastructure of hope” that leaves them exposed to payment fraud and locked out of formal finance. She argues that this is the central challenge for economic inclusion in Southeast Asia today, and explores Enstack's solution.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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IFC Seeks $300 Million to Fund Electricity Mini-Grids in Africa
The International Finance Corp. is setting up an entity aimed at lowering the cost of mini grids in Africa, to accelerate plans to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.
- Categories
- Energy, Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Bangladesh Bank to Launch Instant Payment Platform with Gates Foundation Support
If successful, the initiative could be a turning point for Bangladesh’s financial sector - reducing costs, improving transparency, etc.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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