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Can mVisa Give Ecocash a Run for Its Money?
Mobile payments have become an increasingly important and viable option in Zimbabwe’s payments landscape due, in part, to the prevailing cash shortages and government’s quest to enhance financial inclusion.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Mobile Money Meets Microcredit: Three Key Decisions in Taking a Concept from Design to Pilot
SAJIDA Foundation in Bangladesh is using evidence from data analytics, business case analysis and client research to improve cross-selling as part of the OPTIX project. Three key evidence-based programmatic decisions were necessary to take a new mobile financial service-based microfinance initiative from the design table to being piloted in the field.
- Categories
- Finance
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US Fed Explores Blockchain Use Cases With Industry Participants
The Federal Reserve has established a working group that is exploring financial innovation across the broad range of its responsibilities and engaging with industry stakeholders to discuss the ways in which the payment system could be improved considering the new wave of innovation including distributed ledger technology.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- blockchain, fintech
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India Lags Peers in Its Bid Towards a Cashless Economy
The past couple of years have seen a number of initiatives to facilitate cashless transactions in the Indian economy, including the launch of the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) earlier this year. Such moves may raise the volume of cashless transactions in India in the years to come but the latest available internationally comparable data shows why moving towards a cashless economy remains a Herculean challenge for the country.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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Microfinance: Your Inflexible Friend
ON A shelf in Buland Iqbal’s tiny roadside shop, cassette tapes are slowly turning pale in the sun. Nobody wants them these days, even in a dusty suburb in one of India’s poorest states. So Mr Iqbal has branched out. First he moved into renting DVDs, then, more boldly, into pay-television. A loan of 31,000 rupees ($465) from Sonata, a microfinance firm, helped him acquire a few satellite dishes and decoder boxes. It seems like a clear-cut success for microlending. In fact, Mr Iqbal’s loan illustrates why microlending does not work all that well, and how it needs to change.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech, microfinance
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Mobile Transactions Market to Exceed $500 Billion By 2018
The value of domestic money transfers, including operator money and social media money services, will reach $520 billion in global mobile transactions by 2018, up nearly 200% from an estimated $178 billion last year.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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One of India’s Leading Handset Makers Enters Mobile Wallet Business
Intex Technologies, one of the leading Indian handset player said it has partnered with Tata Teleservices subsidiary mRUPEE to launch their first ever mobile wallet.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Operators Want Telco-Led Mobile Money Initiative in Nigeria
Telecommunications service providers have renewed clamour to lead mobile money initiative in Nigeria on the basis that the current model has not been impactful on the economy.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa