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Viewpoint: 2016: The Year When Financial Inclusion Turns Big Business
It’s that time of year again. As a new year rolls on in, once again pundits are predicting the upcoming peaks and pitfalls for the FinTech industry in the year ahead.
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JP Morgan Backs Project to Get Poor Women to Use Bank Accounts
The world's biggest bank by assets JP Morgan, is spending over half a million dollars (Rs 3.9 crore) in India to get poor women to do more banking. The two-stage programme involves first identifying reasons why women bank accounts are inactive and later coming out with a value proposition for such women by involving a financial services company and a digital payment company.
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- South Asia
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In Response to Crisis, Bank of Ghana to Review Licensing Regime for Microfinance Companies
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has decided to review the process of granting licences to microfinance institutions (MFIs) to forestall illegal operations by unqualified MFIs in the country.
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- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Why Bitcoin Can’t Help The Poorest – Yet
The term “financial inclusion” is a new buzzword in the fintech space. With the rise of services like Abra and MPesa, we are convinced that bitcoin is the solution to the problems of the unbanked. With bitcoin, we say, the house cleaner in Dubai can get her money home and the refugee can get his money over the border into a safer place.
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India’s Postal Service Seeks to Serve as Banker to the Masses
The world's largest post office network is planning to ramp up its financial services across India, triggering a race among commercial banks to set up partnerships to reach remote areas that have been unprofitable.
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- South Asia
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Sloppy Numbers About Poor Households
Affordability – the ratio between price and household income – matters and gets insufficient attention. While there has been a huge effort to sell quality goods and services at a low price point, there's been relatively little effort to understand incomes and spending patterns in poor households.
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- Social Enterprise
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Financing the Farming of the Future
According to the World Bank, 78 percent of the world’s poor are rural poor, and many of them are farmers. If you are looking for social returns, there are few better places to invest than in agriculture. Yet, we see significant unmet capital needs. At Calvert Foundation is interested in bringing additional capital to grow this important sector and encouraging other private investors to join as well. Fair trade lending has been an important movement in the agriculture sector, and has led to the creation of critical jobs and economic activity. But how can we learn from pioneer investors and encourage capital to address the significant gaps in financing for innovations in the value chains for locally consumed crops?
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- Agriculture, Investing
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It Takes a Village to Build a Business – Lessons Learned From a Fintech Accelerator in Mexico
Accion Venture Lab recently teamed with Village Capital and the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth to launch its first-ever business accelerator. Its goal was clear: to find and assemble the 12 best early-stage fintech companies in Mexico, and help them take the leap from betas to scalable businesses. Jackie Hyland discusses lessons learned from the experience in this post.
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