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Mobile Lending App Branch Partners With Visa, Announces $170 Million In Fresh Funding
Branch International, a fintech startup that assesses creditworthiness using smartphone data, has raised $170 million in Series C financing and announced a new partnership with Visa.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Don’t Fear the Algorithm: The Risks and Benefits Of Machine Learning in Finance
Billions of people around the world lack access to basic financial services, and far too many promising entrepreneurs are deprived of financial opportunities simply because they don’t have a credit history. As JUMO founder and CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball sees it, this lack of access is fundamentally a technology problem – and machine learning can help solve it. But algorithm-assisted banking is not without risks: Watkins-Ball discusses its benefits and downsides, and how it's powering JUMO's work in Africa and Asia.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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M-Pesa helps drive up Kenyans’ access to financial services – study
The proportion of Kenya’s population with access to formal financial services rose to 83 percent from 75 percent in 2016, driven largely by mobile technology, a survey part-conducted by the central bank showed on Wednesday.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Why Fintech Startups Are Rapidly Becoming Unicorns in Latin America
In the past few years, over 300 fintech startups have been born in Mexico alone, coming in just second to Brazil, which boasts nearly 400 startups in its own fintech sector.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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Sierra Leone launches competition on financial inclusion
The Sierra Leone FinTech Challenge 2019-2020 aims to harness the growing digital economy in order to develop and test innovative solutions as a way to leapfrog access to finance, and consequently build out government and private sector platforms to operationalize the benefits of the digital economy, the partners said in a joined statement published on Friday.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Report: Mobile cash transactions averaged Sh15 million per minute in Kenya in 2018
The most recent data by the Communications Authority shows mobile money transactions for the October-December period rose by Sh337 billion to Sh2.1 trillion as mobile wallets become the more preferred mode of payment.
- Categories
- Finance, Telecommunications
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Report: New mobile money propositions have the potential to reduce the world’s unbanked population by more than a third
“Simply providing access to financial services is not enough. To achieve any real impact, people also need to become active users of financial products.”
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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How Can Fintech Serve the Poor? A Q&A with CGAP CEO Greta Bull
As fintech innovation transforms the financial sphere, what are the implications for low-income and unbanked individuals? Greta Bull, CEO of CGAP, explored this question in a widely read essay earlier this year, and NextBillion followed up to get a deeper sense of her views on fintech's potential (and practical) impact. Her thoughts offer an important barometer of an organization and an industry in transition, as the tech revolution continues to reshape financial inclusion.
- Categories
- Finance
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