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Airtel is losing its fight against Safaricom for Kenya’s fast-growing mobile market
The telecom company is struggling to put a dent in Safaricom’s dominance, but they are getting left behind.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- mobile finance
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Group That Shelters Trafficked Girls In India Wins $10,000 Prize From A Social Enterprise
Social enterprise CommonBond, which runs a business plan competition for social entrepreneurial-minded MBAs, just held its second contest. The winner of the $10,000 prize: Sanlaap North America, a nonprofit that helps to rescue human trafficking victims and provides them with housing, medical care, therapy and legal aid in Calcutta; it also runs for-profit Zesa, which trains and employs residents of their shelters and other girls and young women, helping them learn marketable skills, and also funds Sanlaap’s operations.
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- Uncategorized
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County of Santa Clara Launches California’s First Pay for Success Project
Project Welcome Home will provide housing and supportive services for the chronically homelessand aims to improve quality of life and reduce reliance on costly government services.
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- Uncategorized
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Early Morning Call: How One Entrepreneur Is Taking on the Money Transfer Giants
Telephones have always been a fundamental part of the remittance process, Ahmed Ismail says with a wry laugh; when they ring early in the morning, it tends to be costly.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- remittances
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The Disruptors Are Forcing Change in the Remittance Industry
Remittances to Africa have grown rapidly in recent times, and it forms an integral part of the $500 billion global money transfer market. This is because several African nations rely heavily on money sent home by friends and relatives working abroad. Hundreds of Africansare migrating daily to keep growing the influx. But the biggest gainers in this have for long being a few firms, whose near-monopoly costs the continent about $2 billion annually in remittance fees. However, a new breed of companies are causing much needed disruption in the money transfer market and are putting consumers back in control of their money.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public policy, remittances
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PRESS RELEASE: India’s Financial Inclusion Leader IFMR HoldingsRaises $25m from Accion, LeapFrog and Lok
IFMR Holdings, a leading financial inclusion platform in India, has announced that they have raised US $25 million in equity from Accion, a financial inclusion pioneer, LeapFrog Investments, a specialist investor in emerging-market financial services, and Lok Capital, an Indian impact investment firm.
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- Accion
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- South Asia
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M-Pesa and the Rise of the Global Mobile Money Market
Most people probably don’t think of Kenya as an innovation and technology hub, but in 2007 it became the launching pad for M-Pesa, a transformativemobile phone-based platform for money transfer and financial services. Since then, M-Pesa has undergone explosive growth: in 2013, a staggering 43 percent of Kenya’s GDP flowed through M-Pesa, with over 237 million person-to-person transactions. M-Pesa is nearly ubiquitous in the daily lives of Kenyans due to a range of services that include money deposit and withdrawal, remittance delivery, bill payment, and microcredit provision.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Mobile Money Service a First for Burundi, ‘Just Like an Instant Message’
London-based money transfer services provider WorldRemit has partnered with Zimbabwe-based EcoCash service to launch instant mobile money transfers in Burundi.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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