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From Heritage to Habit: Why Digital Remittances Languish in Some Cultures But Surge in Others
Thirty years after their introduction, digital remittances have failed to take off. Some 90% of remittances still begin as cash and end as cash - even when banks are the intermediary. Lack of trust, access and interoperability - to name just a few challenges - are keeping lower-income people tied to costlier cash transfers. However, remittance providers and related fintech entities are exploring many new avenues to encourage recipients to keep remittances in the digital ecosystem and possibly use them for other financial products, writes Steven Davidson with Mondato.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Tech Giants Fight for Slice of Mobile Money Billions
The recent news that Google is partnering with Citigroup and the Stanford University Credit Union to launch Cache, a mobile payments service could be a game-changer for the financial technology sector.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- fintech, mobile finance
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Financial Inclusion Week: Reflection and Action from Three Leading Voices
Today, the Center for Financial Inclusion is wrapping up Financial Inclusion Week. The intention for the week was to ask some soul-searching questions about what it means to be inclusive – and about how financial access in the age of fintech can impact the lives of millions, for good or ill. We caught up with three leading voices in the field, asking each of them three key questions focused on what financial inclusion means to them from a personal, organizational and international standpoint.
- Categories
- Finance, Impact Assessment, Investing, Technology
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Inside-Out: The Good and the Bad of insight2impact
Does this situation sound familiar? A development program generates lots of intriguing insights – but once it's over, these learnings end up languishing in a sparsely read report in the back pages of a website. That’s the scenario insight2impact (i2i) aims to avoid. As the program wraps up, i2i lead Hennie Bester describes how it's bringing the insights it has generated, from both successes and failures, to the organizations that can use them – including through a new partnership with NextBillion.
- Categories
- Finance
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GSMA signs $46.5M funding partnership with DFID
The partnership will unearth critical insights on the needs of the underserved and identify and invest in mobile-enabled innovations and business models which can drive inclusion at scale.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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Why the Next Fintech Wave in Latin America will focus on B2B
While consumer-focused Fintech companies are still attracting the lion’s share of investments, here’s a look at why the next wave of Fintech innovation in Latin America will focus on solutions for SMEs.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Latin America
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New Mobile-To-Mobile Digital Payment Service Launched in Africa
WorldRemit’s mobile-first digital model is said to save customers time and money as they don’t need to visit a money transfer agent to send funds home to their loved ones.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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PayPal Fires up “Ripple-Killer” Xoom App for International Payments
The mobile payments app offers next-day money transfers at fees lower than its main payments platform PayPal. According to the website, transfers on Xoom cost around $4 in Europe and $9 to countries further afield.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Europe & Eurasia