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How MasterCard Aims to Bring Financial Services to East Africa
There is no shortage of efforts to bring financial inclusion to those in developing economies who lack access to basic financial services. Most have failed for one very important reason – they’ve been unable to scale. The announcement last week of MasterCard’s partnership with The Gates Foundation will address that problem, starting with the launch of an Innovation Lab in the birthplace of the region’s most successful mobile money scheme – Kenya.
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- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NexThought Monday – 12/8/14: Safaricom, share your M-PESA data!: Why we need data philanthropy in Kenya
With 15 million users and 2 million transaction per day, Safaricom has achieved historic success with its M-PESA mobile money product in Kenya. It has also compiled a historic amount of data, and the granularity is electrifying. This data would be a treasure trove to financial inclusion actors, says James Schintz of MIX, in an impassioned plea for Safaricom to engage in "data philanthropy."
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- Education
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Better Healthcare for Low Income Kenyans
The Business Call to Action and Private Sector Innovation Programme for Health (PSP4H) on December 4, 2014 co- hosted an event focused on innovative private sector approaches to delivering better healthcare to low income Kenyans. The event brought together chief executives, senior representatives from governments, bilateral donors, civil society and the United Nations.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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OPINION: Cryptocurrencies Can Transform Financial Services
Can an open protocol-based network technology transform a cartelized, oligopolistic and highly regulated industry by transferring power from large corporations to individuals?
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“Gift-a-Pension” Initiative Helps Maids, Drivers, Cooks Save for Their Retirement in India
This September, A Mary, 47, got something she never thought she ever could — not a car or a home but a pension. A house help and a mother of two whose husband is a driver, Delhi-based Mary always viewed a pension as something only the affluent could afford — until her employer Kurt Strasser, a senior sector specialist at German development bank KfW, brought it within her reach.
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- Impact Assessment
- Region
- South Asia
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How Responsible Is Digital Finance?: 10 insights from CGAP’s Global Pulse Survey
How responsible is digital finance today? Though there’s broad agreement that this question deserves more attention, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of consumer risks with digital financial services globally. In response, CGAP conducted a survey among policy makers, financial service providers, consumer advocates and foundations involved in providing digital financial services. Here are the top ten survey insights.
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The Past and Future of Mobile Finance in Africa: Part two of our Q&A with Henry Maloba at Grameen Foundation’s Mobile Financial Services Accelerator
Henry Maloba leads Grameen Foundation’s Mobile Financial Services Accelerator in Uganda, which aims to bring financial services to rural Ugandans by forging collaboration between telcos and banks. In part two of our Q&A, Maloba discusses the tensions between these sectors and among telcos themselves, and shares his views on the recent past and future of mobile financial services in Africa.
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Timor Leste’s First Mobile Money Pilot Launched to Expand Access to Financial Services
BNU, in partnership with Timor Telecom, and with support from the Inclusive Finance for the Under-Served Economy (INFUSE) Programme and MicroSave, launched Timor-Leste's first mobile wallet product called BNU Mobile.
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