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E-payments to dethrone cash
“There is a clear correlation between the share of electronic payments and the opportunity for GDP growth,” Tim Murphy, general counsel and chief franchise officer for MasterCard, told The Post on the forum’s sidelines. “With every 1 percent increase in the share of electronic payments of a country’s personal expenditure, you can see somewhere between a third and a half of a percentage point increase in GDP.”
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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This cryptocurrency project is now courting banks
The company said in a press release that by utilizing Stellar’s open-source network, it will be able to power payments between financial institutions and enable “seamless exchange between currencies, and let anyone build low-cost financial services.”
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- North America
- Tags
- fintech
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Safaricom Launches M-Pesa Card for Point-of-Sale Payments
Already, the leading mobile service provider has signed up 13,000 customers in Nakuru to the newly launched M-Pesa 1Tap service.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech, mobile finance
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Why Low-Income Families Don’t Send Their Children to College. Hint: It’s Not Always About Money.
Household income is not the only limiting factor as to why children of low to upper-low income families do not attend or save for university. Significant behavioral reasons are also involved, and ESCALA, which helps families save for higher education, worked with BFA’s customer insights team to identify and develop a plan to help overcome a few of them.
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Report: Leveraging digital to unlock the base of the pyramid market in Africa
The level of formal banking and insurance penetration across Africa remains low due to the fact that consumer spending power for the majority of the population is low and unsteady. This has been seen as a hindrance to providing products and services through traditional distribution models, even though this market represents the majority of spending power in Africa.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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d.light partners with microfinance institution Musoni for off-grid solar in Kenya
D.light’s managing director for Africa, Jacob Okoth, said that the partnership made perfect sense for the two companies, as they target the same customer segment. Musoni works to expand financial outreach in rural areas and d.light’s mission is to continue to work towards rural electrification.
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The High Cost of ‘Data Darkness’ in the Developing World
The developing world is data dark, writes Tara Thiagarajan of Madura Microfinance; gathering even the most elementary data is a monumental task, requiring feet on the ground, paid employees and auditing systems. Without it, however, products don’t have good market fit, customers don’t get what they really need and the cost of customer acquisition and delivery is higher.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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The real promise of regulatory technology in financial inclusion
Financial authorities could someday run digitally, but getting there is not going to be easy. In many countries, regulators today often use fax machines, let alone cloud-based software and analytics. And yet, the future of the financial sector depends on modernizing regulatory authorities.
- Categories
- Uncategorized
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