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African Fintech Driving Financial Inclusion Closes Funding Round With Over $200 Million
Moniepoint, which focuses on driving financial inclusion for MSMEs and individuals, received an additional $90m backing, after initially raising $110m in October 2024, including from several impact investors.
- Categories
- Finance, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Honest’s $140 Million Boost: Can Indonesia’s Fastest-Growing Credit Card Startup Redefine Consumer Finance?
Backed by global investors and fresh capital, Jakarta-based Honest is betting on speed, digital-first products, and financial inclusion to challenge traditional banks.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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The Bank of Industry and Bumpa to Empower 200 Youth-led MSMEs
"The collaboration, implemented under the youth and skills thematic area of the bank, aims to address the critical challenge of market access for young entrepreneurs . . . "
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Swedfund Boosts Financial Access in Southern Africa With $15 Million Loan to Select Africa
The investment aims to enhance access to credit for low-income individuals who are often excluded from traditional banking systems.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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SACCOs, Social Collateral and Bitcoin Communities: A Filmmaker Documents New (and Old) Ways to Extend Financial Inclusion Past the Limits of Fintech
Luke Willms worked at an African NGO, where he was tasked with creating short videos to showcase the positive impacts of its microcredit program. But as the video project progressed, his assumptions about the effectiveness of microfinance began to unravel. He would spend the next seven years filming stories from across Africa and other regions, exploring whether microlending still held relevance in a rapidly changing world. The resulting documentary, “Unbankable,” was released last year, with the goal of helping to reframe the global conversation around financial inclusion. He shares key stories from the movie, which show how Africa’s informal, trust-based financial systems offer models of resilience and adaptation that could find new applications in other emerging countries.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Visa and PhilGuarantee Ink Deal to Boost Credit Access for MSMEs in the Philippines
The agreement will have Visa and PhilGuarantee explore credit guarantee schemes tailored for MSMEs, widen lending access through partner financial institutions, etc.
- Region
- South Asia
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Analysis: The limits of AI in Social Change
More actors—from grantmaking to service delivery—are exploring the use of AI. However, the excitement around scale and efficiency often overshadows a critical question: What does it mean to bring machine-generated abstraction into systems built on trust, context, and relationship?
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Global
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When AI Gets It Wrong: Lessons from a Women-Centered Design Experiment Highlight the Need for Inclusive GPTs
In emerging markets, women entrepreneurs continue to face systemic barriers to financial inclusion. And as Koheun Lee at CARE explains, ChatGPT and other AI models sometimes contribute to this exclusion, reinforcing societal biases that limit women’s potential for business growth and long-term financial health. She shares insights from CARE's attempt to build a women-centered design GPT — and proposes some practical steps AI users can take to mitigate bias against women when working with mainstream GPTs.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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