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Poverty-Focused Innovation: Alex Counts, CEO of Grameen Foundation, on how to foster financial innovation by creating agency for the poor
As part of NextBillion Financial Innovation’s launch, we invited a number of top innovators and leaders to contribute their views on financial innovation – what’s driving it, where momentum is heading, and what obstacles remain. Today, Alex Counts, CEO of Grameen Foundation, deconstructs the foundation’s approach to financial innovation – and how it maintains the focus on the poor for which the Grameen name is famous.
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The Growing Global Need for Innovative Financial Solutions: Citi Foundation invites you to join an ongoing dialogue around financial inclusion
We envision NextBillion Financial Innovation as a knowledge platform, where a diverse group of experts and practitioners from a range of organizations can share their research or their work, and partake in discussions around financial products, financial capability research and technology. These connections will help us achieve the shared goals of expanding financial services to the underserved, financing promising new businesses, and ultimately, improving the livelihoods of the poor.
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Safaricom Cautions Kenya Over Higher Taxes
Kenyan mobile operator, Safaricom, has warned the government that further increases in Excise Tax – a duty levied on goods or services for sale – will make mobile payment services less affordable for poorer citizens.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Ripe for Innovation: CGAP CEO Tilman Ehrbeck, On How New Approaches to Financial Services for the Poor Are Overcoming a Massive Market Failure
As part of NextBillion Financial Innovation’s launch, we invited a number of top innovators and leaders to contribute their views on financial innovation – what’s driving it, where momentum is heading, and what obstacles remain. Today Tilman Ehrbeck, CEO of CGAP, explores why financial exclusion has persisted at the BoP, and how innovation is turning this around.
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- Finance
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Why Backing College Loans To Low-Income Students In Mexico Is A Game Changer
Mexico has a smaller proportion of college students than other countries on a similar path of growth and progress. At FINAE, our first great challenge was to create a model that achieved a balance between a profitable business and affordable interest rates for the students without any kind of governmental subsidy or support, as it happens in other countries.
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- Education
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MasterCard Promotes Financial Inclusion With Electronic Payments
While payment cards are often promoted as premium status-driven consumer products in the United States and Europe, in developing countries debit cards are proving valuable for delivering child benefits, pension payments and government salaries.
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Bank? What bank? Orange, Visa and the changing face of Africa’s mobile money
While relatively few Africans have a bank account, companies are finding new ways to offer consumers bank-type services just using mobile devices.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Ripple Effect: Women Powering Work Through Microfinance And Entrepreneurship
When Roshaneh Zafar quit her job at the World Bank in 1995 to establish the Kashf Foundation, she carried a moment of inspiration and a powerful vision for the future with her. Ten years later, after plenty of opposition along the way, she has proven her critics wrong by showing that women-centered and women-managed microfinance programs in Pakistan can indeed flourish and succeed.
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