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Tech Startups Are Flooding Kenya With Apps Offering High-Interest Loans
Tala has made $1 billion in microloans to people in developing countries, all using its app. It says it can reach those who’ve been ignored by banks, because its software generates instant credit ratings from data scraped off prospective borrowers’ phones. The company is part of the financial-inclusion movement, a loose coalition of tech companies, banks, and nongovernmental organizations trying to lift people out of poverty by offering them new ways to gain access to loans and other financial services.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Intra-African Remittance Market Set to Soar in 2020
The World Bank estimates that migrant workers within Africa send remittances in excess of $14 billion dollars each year, and in 2018 intra-African remittances represented 20% of global remittance flows according to Ecobank Group.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Remittances: Moving People Move Money
New innovations in digital technology are rapidly changing the global remittance landscape.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Press Release: Financial Inclusion in West Africa Gets a Boost With New $10M Raise by Aella Fintech
For millions of poor and low-income households, entrepreneurs, and nascent businesses in West Africa without access to financial institutions, micro-lending fintechs like Aella provide a broader array of financial products — savings, insurance, payments and specialized loans, focused on lifting many out of poverty. Aella plans to use this funding to scale its lending operations and expand its product base into payments.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Mastercard Left Libra Association Over Regulatory and Viability Concerns, Says CEO
Banga said there were no obvious means for the Libra Association to become profitable or make money from its users. "When you don’t understand how money gets made, it gets made in ways you don’t like," he said.
- Categories
- Finance
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Press Release: Mexico Digital Bank Stori Raises $10 Million USD and Launches Inclusive Digital Credit Card
Highly concentrated in the super-prime space, the banking industry has underserved the Mexico mass population. Only about 40% of the nearly 130 million population have bank accounts, and less than 15% of consumers have access to bank provided lending. In addition, most banks have not caught up with the digital transformation and are not able to provide a compellingly simple and good customer experience.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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Paymob, Tamweely Team up to Empower Female Entrepreneurs
The #AcceptTheChange campaign will initially aim to empower 250 female merchants (and their female clients) by availing e-payment solutions that will allow the selected entrepreneurs to further benefit from a booming digital economy in Egypt.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- North Africa & Near East
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Facebook Libra’s Promise of Financial Inclusion ‘Doesn’t Sound Right,’ Says Mastercard CEO
The CEO of Mastercard has revealed why the company pulled out of Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project, saying he “doesn’t understand how it works”.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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