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Microfinance borrowers reach all-time high in Pakistan
he first quarter of 2016 has recorded an upward trend in microcredit outreach with active borrowers reaching an all-time high of 4 million while the gross loan portfolio of the sector crossed Rs100 billion, said the Pakistan Microfinance Network quarterly report.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
- Tags
- microfinance
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Students and professionals team up for first Ann Arbor Health Hackathon
The "hackathon" included 24 hours of health-related “hacking,” which involved teams pitching ideas and creating prototypes for solutions to health problems. The event focused on preventing disease in underserved areas of the developing world.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- North America
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How Barclays Aims to Bring a Billion Unbanked into the Fold
Though its parent company, the $1.8 trillion-asset Barclays PLC, has had operations in Africa for more than 100 years, today Barclays Africa has only 12 million customers, about 1% of the continent's total population.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NIH grants $2.3M to development of FeverPhone, a portable disease diagnosis kit
Quick diagnosis of bloodborne diseases can very much be a matter of life and death, but bouncing results off a hospital can take hours or days — so the National Institutes of Health and Cornell University are working on a device called the FeverPhone that could cut that time to as little as 15 minutes.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Infoteria and Tech Bureau complete microfinance sector’s first blockchain experiment
According to the press release, this attempt marks the first blockchain experiment in the micro-finance sector. Both companies successfully transferred loan and deposit account data from BC Finance, Myanmar's largest microfinance institution, to the Mijin private blockchain. The blockchain was hosted on Microsoft Azure for this test.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- blockchain, microfinance
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FinTech Firm MyBucks Becomes Listed in Germany after Successful IPO
The latest financial technology firm to complete a successful initial public offering (IPO) is MyBucks S.A., which was welcomed by Deutsche Borse on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange today where it was listed on the Entry Standard market.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia
- Tags
- fintech
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Patient views highlight potential for Peek smartphone suite to transform eye health
An estimated 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, of whom 39 million are blind. Up to 80% of blindness and visual impairment is avoidable but a lack of trained specialists and the high cost of buying and transporting the right equipment is a major challenge. This is especially true in rural areas and in the low-income nations of Africa and Asia that share the largest proportion of the burden.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Viewpoint: Don’t Let Facebook Likes Sway Credit Decisions
What if you had to choose between keeping your Facebook friends and getting a home equity line of credit? What if your student loans could not be refinanced until you cut certain relatives out of your digital life?
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech
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