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Kenya: Mobile money interoperability to launch in March 2018
Interoperability will also present consumers with choices of services and not being locked into one service or mobile network, given how costly it has been to transfer money between mobile money services.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Social enterprise Pollinate Energy has provided 20,000 urban poor families with affordable, green energy
In 2012, six young Australians — Jamie Chivers, Monique Alfris, Ben Merven, Katerina Kimmorley, Emma Colenbrander, and Alexie Seller — came together to see if they could find a way for children living in a slum in North Bengaluru, to have light to study.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
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Digital transactions on the rise in India – but fall drastically short of 25-billion target
Only about 14.8 billion digital transactions were undertaken across India from April 1 to January 28, show data sourced from the ministry of electronics and IT (MeitY). This includes bank-to-bank electronic money transfers, digital wallet payments, Aadhaar-based and electronic toll payments.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Indonesia’s Fintech Lending Boom Exploits Shortfall in Bank Loans
The emergence of these peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms has so far been welcomed by Indonesia's financial regulators which see them as offering a much needed service to cash-strapped businesses and consumers at a time when Southeast Asia's biggest economy has been hobbled by sluggish bank lending.
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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How microcredit can help poor countries after natural disasters
BOTH, in different ways, worry about liquidity. And global warming may, indeed, be bringing meteorologists and financiers together. On January 18th, VisionFund, a microlending charity, and Global Parametrics, a venture that crunches climate and seismic data, launched what they billed as the “world’s largest non-governmental climate-insurance programme”. The scheme will offer microfinance to about 4m people across six countries in Asia and Africa affected by climate-change-related calamities.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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These Bold Ideas Aim To Make Plastic Waste A Thing Of The Past
The winners of a recent contest hosted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation all start with one fundamental concept: We can–and must–replace non-recyclable materials on the market with biodegradable alternatives.
- Categories
- Environment
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India’s flourishing fintech sector is craving the finance minister’s attention
While the Narendra Modi government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have already laid down regulations for certain segments, such as peer-to-peer lending, others like cryptocurrencies and online lending startups are yet to be regulated. Such regulation may mean stricter compliance, but the management at these firms believe it will lend legitimacy to the industry, which is expected to be worth $2.4 billion by 2020. That, in turn, will help them grow faster.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- cryptocurrency, fintech, regulations
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Grameen America Celebrates 10 Years of Empowering Women through Microfinance as it Announces Foray into Impact Investing
Previously, Grameen America had been funded largely by traditional philanthropy and concessionary capital from foundations, charitable organizations, individual investors, and commercial lenders. The organization’s adoption of impact investing as an additional means of funding comes at a time when impact investing—defined by the Global Impact Investing Network as “investments made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate social and environmental impact alongside a financial return”—is on the rise.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- North America
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