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MTN & EcoCash launch sub-Saharan Africa’s first operator-to-operator cross-border remittance channel
EcoCash and MTN Zambia officially unveiled a remittance partnership that will enable MTN customers in Zimbabwe’s northern neighbor to send money into the country via the mobile platform MTN Money Wallet.
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- Uncategorized
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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United Nations study finds digital payments to Ebola response workers saved lives and $10 million
By using digital payments to pay Ebola response workers, Sierra Leone massively cut payment times, avoiding large-scale strikes and ensuring a stable workforce to defeat Ebola.
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- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Vodacom pulls plug on mobile money service M-Pesa in South Africa
May 9 Vodacom will discontinue its mobile money service M-Pesa in South Africa after it failed to attract enough support in its slow-growing home market, the telecommunications firm said on Monday.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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NexThought Monday: Our inaugural podcast – a conversation with the MasterCard Foundation’s Ann Miles
In April, the MasterCard Foundation Fund for Rural Prosperity awarded over $10 million to five innovative companies working to increase financial access in rural Africa. In NextBillion's inaugural podcast, we spoke to Ann Miles, Director of Financial Inclusion & Youth Livelihoods at the MasterCard Foundation, about the competition's winners and the broader digital financial inclusion space in Africa.
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- Agriculture, Technology
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Digital Government: 4 Keys to Kenya’s Success with Electronic Government Payments
Kenya has long been grappling with inefficiencies in government service delivery, characterized by resource constraints, bureaucratic processes and lack of accountability. In response, the government launched an integrated service model for person-to-government and business-to-government payments, allowing digital payments via online and mobile tools. Here are four reasons Kenya is ideally suited to digitize its government functions.
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- Uncategorized
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Airtime to the Rescue: Why India Should Mobilize Telcos for Disaster Relief
Last April, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake shook Nepal, telcos offered free mobile airtime for 48 hours to their customers based in India, so they could connect with their family members and friends in Nepal. This example illustrates the potential of utilizing the payments infrastructure to respond to natural disasters. I believe this potential could be more fully realized by channeling relief and rehabilitation funds to disaster victims using airtime as currency – and India is the ideal proving ground for the concept.
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- Uncategorized
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Pro-Women, Anti-Cash: How Cashless Economies Can Boost Women’s Empowerment
We are still a long way from a world where cash is obsolete – in fact, 85 percent of consumer transactions are still conducted in cash, and for many people, hard currency clearly remains a useful commodity. But the landscape is changing rapidly, and for the world’s poorest and most excluded communities – and for women in particular – the drive towards cashless economies offers an exciting window of opportunity.
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- Uncategorized
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Financial Products are Available – Why Aren’t the Poor Using Them?: IPA is seeking research partners to help answer that question
Take-up of mobile financial products remains low, and usage rates are often disappointing. That's why Innovations for Poverty Action is facilitating research to test solutions to this problem. We're republishing this post, which originally ran last July, since IPA is re-opening its fund for research proposals. The new deadline for Expressions of Interest applications is April 29, 2016.
- Categories
- Education
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