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Survey: Over 89 Percent of Rwandans Have Access to Finance
Rwanda has surpassed its financial inclusion targets with more than 89 per cent of adult population accessing financial services, a new FinScope survey 2016 shows.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Ericsson Report: Mobile Phones Provide Fast Track to Financial Inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa
Even as mobile money services become part of daily life for millions in Sub-Saharan Africa, many potential customers face basic barriers to accessing the services on their own mobile phones. Lack of awareness and basic prerequisites, and low appreciation of the benefits are some of the hurdles.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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China’s Mobile Payment Revolution Is Going to Africa
With the launch of Apple Pay in mainland China on Feb. 18, Apple has become the first foreign player to secure a place at the table for China's enormous mobile payment market. The company will be battling for market share with e-commerce giant Alibaba's Alipay and Tencent's WeChat Wallet, which dominate China's mobile payment arena.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech
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There Are Always Surprises: 11 Bank-Breaking Facts About Mobile Money and Africa
The majority of the two billion people in the world who remain unbanked and locked out of access to safe, secure and affordable financial services are in developing economies, the majority in Africa.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech
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Bitcoin to the Rescue in Venezuela?
Venezuela may not have much milk or toilet paper these days, but it does boast some of the latest cutting edge financial technologies. Bitcoin, the virtual currency system that sidesteps traditional banking intermediaries to conduct financial transactions, is increasingly becoming the payment method of choice for a group of Venezuelan entrepreneurs. Is this a vote of confidence for virtual currencies in developing countries? Or desperate times breeding financial innovation in a crumbling economy? Perhaps a bit of both.
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- Technology
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- fintech
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GSMA and Mobile Operators Launch Initiative to Extend Mobile Money and Mobile Internet to Women Globally
The GSMA today announced the launch of the Connected Women Commitment Initiative, aimed at reducing the mobile gender gap. Initial commitments by GSMA operator members, with over 75 million mobile internet and mobile money customers, will aim to connect millions more women in low- and middle-income countries by 20201. These operators will seek to increase the proportion of their female customers to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. This builds on the 15 million women already benefiting from female-focused services offered by the GSMA’s Connected Women operator partners.
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- Technology
- Tags
- fintech
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GSMA Releases 2015 State of the Industry Report on Mobile Money
Mobile money has done more to extend the reach of financial services in the last decade than traditional “bricks and mortar” banking has in the last century.
- Categories
- Technology
- Tags
- fintech
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Africa’s Big Banks Are Betting on Fintech Startups and Bitcoin to Beat Disruption
African banks have been late to the fintech party, but after leaving huge swaths of the population to get their financial services from telcos(most famously Safaricom’s M-Pesa in Kenya), banks here are increasingly seeing the continent as a testing ground for new financial technologies like bitcoin and the blockchain.
- Categories
- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- digital payments, fintech