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The Clear Blue Water on the Other Side of the Digital Divide
Digital financial exclusion represents both a development challenge for poor customers, and a missed opportunity for providers, says MicroSave founder Graham Wright. While providers fight for a share of the most profitable and easiest-to-reach markets, they often overlook the vast commercial potential of lower-income communities – in territory that is largely not competed. Wright explores how to tap into this "fiercely loyal" market.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Safaricom adds voice control to m-Pesa
In what the company hailed as a world-first, its customers will be able to check balances before and after making transactions by dialling a number from the handset connected to their account and entering a code.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Investment = Inclusion: Can Fintech, With a Boost from Investors, Level the Playing Field for the Unbanked in Africa?
Fintech – particularly mobile finance – is increasingly vital to Africa's economic growth. But despite the continent's impressive mobile money penetration, much of its population remains unbanked or underbanked. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see another trend developing in tandem with Africans’ embrace of fintech: namely, investors’ embrace of African fintech companies. Iftin Fatah at OPIC explores why more investment means more digital financial inclusion.
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Partners Release Study On Attitudes To Mobile Money In Africa
The study focuses on four countries of varying degrees of DFS market maturity: Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Zambia. It is a knowledge product of the Partnership for Financial inclusion, a $37.4 million joint initiative of IFC and the Mastercard Foundation, to advance financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Stealthy’ Saving: Building on Payroll Credit to Automate Savings
Basic savings accounts are essential to helping people build assets, and to establishing their relationship with financial institutions. But customers often fail to open or use these accounts – even when they have the money and the intention of saving it. Acreimex, a savings & credit cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico, worked with BFA to find an innovative, "stealthy" way to introduce savings to its existing payroll loan customers. The results of their pilot program were intriguing.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Arun Jaitley launches Paytm Payments Bank, vouches for digital payments
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, during the inauguration of the Paytm Payments Bank on Tuesday, said the modern technology had changed the entire dynamics the way banking was done in the country.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- South Asia
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Live from European Microfinance Week: Watch Recordings of Friday’s Two Plenary Sessions
NextBillion is covering European Microfinance Week as a media partner, and we're planning to live-stream two plenary sessions on Friday, Dec. 1, via Facebook Live. You can watch the broadcasts on our Facebook Page at 9:00 - 10:30 AM Luxembourg Time/3:00 - 4:30 AM EST, and at 3:30-4:30 PM Luxembourg Time/9:30-10:30 AM EST.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Press release: Fintech Innovator Humaniq and Regtech Leader Coinfirm Partner to Bring Financial Transparency and Inclusion to Developing Economies With Blockchain
Coinfirm, a recognized Blockchain regtech leader known for its AML/CTF Platform, will integrate its platform across the Humaniq ecosystem to provide a new level of transparency and security. Humaniq will benefit from enhanced security, protecting transactions made in its native HMQ token from uncontrolled misuse.
- Categories
- Finance
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