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Africa’s Banks Work With Fintech Startups to Avoid Being Left Behind
Africa's banks are running scared. On a continent where traditional banking has clearly failed – 80 percent of the population, around 330 million adults, don't use formal or semiformal banking services – new services are emerging that could yet render banks redundant.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech
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Easypaisa, Nestle Collaborate to Facilitate Dairy Farmer Payments in Pakistan
Providing financial access to thousands of Pakistani dairy farmers as part of its mission of empowering societies, Easypaisa has collaborated with Nestlé Pakistan to make disbursement of milk collection payments swift, easy, and transparent.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Weekly Roundup: A New Africa Accelerator – What Moms, Kids and GE Get Out of It
This week, GE and Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship announced the healthymagination Mother & Child Initiative, which intends to help social enterprises refine their business plans, manage their human capital and prepare for growth. We discuss this program, the value of old-school development solutions, and (potentially) big news from Facebook in this roundup.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
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Samsung Pay Joins China’s Trillion Dollar Mobile Wallet Market
With Apple already expecting China to be its biggest mobile payment market, it's no surprise that its biggest direct competitor, Samsung, also wants a slice of this piping hot pie. After a one-month public beta, today the Korean giant is officially launching its Samsung Pay service in China in partnership with UnionPay -- inevitably the same bankcard company thathelped launch Apple Pay locally. In other words, only UnionPay credit and debit cards -- up to 10 of them per device -- can be associated with local Samsung phones for the time being.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- fintech
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A New mHealth Device to Tackle Global Health
That global health is a puzzle that mobile health technologies can help to solve is not new. But it's always amazing to see entrepreneurs dream up new applications nonetheless.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
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Blueprint for Ignition: How the Catalyst Fund Got Started
The Catalyst Fund's intervention is specific: It provides small, flexible grants of up to US $100,000 alongside mentoring and advisory services from investors and a robust learning agenda, dedicated to supporting innovative but pre-investable inclusive fintech startups. Here's how the Accion Venture Lab team worked with the Gates Foundation, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Quona Capital, Grey Ghost Ventures and the Omidyar Network, among others, to create it.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
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Report: Facebook Is Turning Messenger Into a Mobile Wallet
Facebook has big plans to turn Messenger into an “Everything App”that will replace many others found on your smartphone, but one of the most important shifts will be turning it into an app that pays for things. Now code found inside Messenger suggests Facebook plans to turn on a feature to make digital transactions or even pay for physical goods in stores, according to a report in The Information.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Smartphones Sales to See 60 Percent Growth in India: Assocham
Sales of affordable smartphones with in-built camera and internet-enabled features are set to shoot up to 160 million in 2016-17 from 100 million in 2015-16, an Assocham study said on Wednesday.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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