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Flutterwave Has Raised $170 Million With a Bid to Connect Africa’s Digital Payment Landscape
Flutterwave, an Africa-focused payment technology company, has raised $170 million in a Series C round, positioning itself to further connect and capitalize on the continent’s thriving yet highly fragmented digital payment landscape.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments
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In the Race for Dominance in African Fintech, Partnerships With Phone Makers Are Transforming the Landscape
Corporate partnerships and acquisitions have proliferated in Africa's fintech sector in recent years, as companies fight for dominance in the growing digital payment space. Digital economy analyst Jill Lagos Shemin highlights an emerging element of this trend: alliances between mobile phone makers and payment providers and telecom operators. She explores how these partnerships can boost customer access to smartphones and digital credit, while expanding Africa's digital finance ecosystem and building tech players' footprint in this sought-after market.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
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Stori Raises $32.5 Million in a Lightspeed-led Series B to Build Mexico’s Credit Card for the Masses
While credit cards are commonplace in the United States, they are far less ubiquitous in many other countries, particularly those in Latin America. In Mexico in particular, cash remains the dominant method of payment, with an estimated 86% of all payments being in the form of cash.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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Activating a Network of 4 Million: Community Health Workers are Key to Fighting COVID-19 – Here’s How They Can Accelerate Financial Inclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the role of community health workers. According to Tanjila Mazumder Drishti, Khondokar Anwar Shadat and Raiya Kishwar Ashraf at BRAC, it has also demonstrated their potential as proponents of financial access — for themselves and the families they serve. They explore a BRAC initiative to enroll its 50,000 health workers in Bangladesh in mobile money, and share how this scalable model could have enormous implications for global financial inclusion.k
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Finance, Health Care, Transportation
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MTN Teams up With Mastercard on Mobile Wallets in Africa
Africa’s leading mobile operator MTN has partnered with payment platform Mastercard to add online payment functions to its mobile wallet for user across its fintech footprint.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: What’s Ahead? Southeast Asia Startup and Venture Capital Ecosystems 2021
Venture Capitalists (VCs) believe in capitalizing on disruptive innovation and developing technologies to displace older technologies, create new markets, and prepare the world for unexpected situations (e.g., global pandemics)–even if not all the startups and industries that VCs invest in may do so.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Fintech Points the Way to Full Financial Inclusion for Cambodians
With more cellphones existing in the Kingdom than citizens and one of the youngest populations in the world, Cambodia’s mobile financial industry may be poised to bring the Kingdom’s deficit in financial inclusion to an end. This potential tipping point could mean the end to Cambodia’s status as one of the most underbanked nations in the world, according to experts.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Grab Raises $300 Million for Fintech Arm’s Ambitious Expansion
Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery giant Grab has raised more than $300 million from investors led by South Korea’s Hanwha Asset Management Co. Ltd for its rapidly-expanding financial services business.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech, startups
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