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A Decade in, Why the Pay-As-You-Go Solar Sector is Maturing and Brightening
This month marks nine years since Jesse Moore and Nick Hughes first sketched out a plan for M-KOPA - one of the early leaders in the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar market. Since then, M-KOPA has installed PAYG solar systems in over 750,000 African homes, and now receives over 30 million customer micropayments per year, writes Moore. He estimates that PAYG solar will soon reach over 10 million customers and surpass a billion dollars in cumulative revenue – but he cautions that the industry should gird itself for a wave of consolidation as it embarks on its second decade.
- Categories
- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Technology
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Perspective: Will Facebook Make Crypto Relevant For The Underserved?
Earlier this month, the WSJ reported that Facebook is building a team and getting its crypto ducks in a row to launch a “cryptocurrency-based payments system on the back of its gigantic social network.” Public details on the effort are thin and may have been outshone by news that one of Facebook’s co-founders is calling for the company to break up. But the fintech world is predictably aflutter about the perils and opportunities of a brand new digital coin that could allow users to hold and send money safely and securely to nearly every socially networked person on the planet.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Mexican central bank in talks with Amazon about new mobile payments
The payment system, known as CoDi, is being built by central bank Banco de México, known as Banxico. CoDi will allow customers to make payments online and in person through smartphones free of charge using QR codes.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
- Region
- Latin America
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PayGo vs. MFIs: What Works Better for Energy Access Consumer Financing – And Does it Have to Be Either/Or?
Many last-mile customers can’t afford clean energy products without financial solutions to help pay for them. Energy enterprises often meet this need in two different ways: by partnering with microfinance institutions (MFIs) to provide loans to customers, or by offering pay-as-you-go (PayGo) financing options. The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s CleanStart program has supported energy providers using both of these models, and Teresa Le, an energy finance consultant at the program, explores their relative merits and challenges.
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Step by Step Credit: Empowering the Unbanked through Progressive Finance
Despite notable progress in the financial inclusion sector, widespread, permanent change remains elusive. The good news, says Aristotle Socrates at Juvo, is that not only is this change possible, but everything we need to make it happen already exists. In fact, it might be as easy as setting aside long-held assumptions about the role of wealth and income in establishing credit. He outlines how improved data infrastructure is connecting lenders to creditworthy customers, producing big gains for both providers and the financially excluded in the developing world.
- Categories
- Finance
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Report: Nigeria lagging behind in financial inclusion, mobile money
An International Finance Corporation report says Nigeria is lagging behind its peers in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of financial inclusion and mobile money.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Uganda’s finance minister says mobile money tax may be reviewed
Uganda’s finance minister told journalists on Monday that a new tax on mobile money transactions in the country that was approved by parliament last week, is different from what the cabinet agreed.
- Categories
- Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Test Case for Digital Leap-Frogging: What the Financial Inclusion Community Can Learn from Vietnam
With its rapid economic expansion, large unbanked population, high mobile penetration and progressive regulations, Vietnam has the potential to leap-frog over brick-and-mortar banking and arrive directly at the forefront of digital finance. Krishna Thacker of MetLife Foundation in Asia profiles an emerging innovator in the country's mobile payments space, and explores lessons learned in driving the uptake of digital financial services.
- Categories
- Finance, Technology
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