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AgroCenta came about when both co-founders identified the missing gap in the post harvest value chain, that is access to market for smallholder farmers. This gap gave way to exploitative buying from middlemen at the disadvantage to the smallholder farmer.

AgroCenta’s core services are AgroTrade : Which is a sales platform that connects smallholder farmer directly to a larger market to trade fairly. AgroTrade matches smallholder farmers in rural areas to small, medium and large buyers in the urban areas. TrucKR : TruckR is the on-demand trucks & logistics aspect of AgroCenta where farmers can book for truck delivery services to cart their commodities from farms to markets just at a click of a button AgroInfo : Real time weather, market prices and extension advisory services are delivered via SMS and voice solutions to smallholder farmers using mobile technologies AgroPay : AgroPay is the financial inclusion platform for smallholder farmers where farmers in rural areas, without bank accounts, receive payments for goods and services via mobile money technologies.

Biometrics is another sort of key differentiator in the space for increased security and ease of sign-up. Africa is ready for digitisation, and we have already seen good traction in SA with our Mukuru Card product. Mukuru is investing in technology to support customers as they digitise in the coming years, across our footprint.

Ensuring that the core stability and functional capability brought about by the technologies and coding languages mentioned earlier is of paramount importance. We are relaunching our app and that’s been built on the Flutter framework. The app is important because it allows for content rich customer engagements.It will also enable us to ingest/scan customer documents in real-time, process card payments securely so that customers can create and pay for orders in one step as opposed to two, as well as allowing for a host of additional customer facing services and capabilities to be deployed.The core DNA of our business is making sure that it’s super simple and that somebody with a feature phone is not precluded from using the service, because that is the essence of where our customer base is at, so we want modular technological capabilities that we can use in any conditions.

JUMO is one of South Africa’s next-generation fintech companies offering emerging market entrepreneurs financial services.

Fawry had witnessed a surge in its stock price during the first two months after its public markets debut but the price afterward remained almost flat until March – when they also saw it drop to one of its lowest points of EGP 7 per share. But since then, it has been on an upward trajectory – which also coincides with Covid-19.

Fawry that is the only technology company on The Egyptian Exchange currently offers over 250 electronic payment services through its network of over 105,000 service points across 300 cities in Egypt – that include ATMs, mobile wallets, retail shops, post offices, and little vendor kiosks.

The pandemic has created a surge in demand for electronic payment services and Fawry being the leading player in Egypt obviously has benefitted a lot from that – which is also evident from company’s just-announced financials for the second quarter.

Shortcomings of Robo-Advisors The entry of robo-advisors has broken down some of the traditional barriers between the financial services world and average consumers. Because of these online platforms, sound financial planning is now accessible to everyone, not just high-net-worth individuals. Still, many in the industry have doubts about the viability of robos as a one-size-fits-all solution to wealth management. Given the relative nascency of their technological capabilities and minimal human presence, robo-advisors have been criticized for lacking in empathy and sophistication. They are good entry-level tools for people with small accounts and limited investment experience, namely millennials, but are far from sufficient for those who need advanced services like estate planning, complicated tax management, trust fund administration, and retirement planning. Automated services are also ill-equipped to deal with unexpected crises or extraordinary situations. For instance, if a young person's parents passed away and he/she receives an inheritance, going online to a robo-advisor to manage the money is probably not the optimal decision. In fact, a study conducted by Investopedia and the Financial Planning Association found that consumers prefer a combination of human and technological guidance, especially when times are rough. According to the report, 40% of participants said they would not be comfortable using an automated investing platform during extreme market volatility. Furthermore, robo-advisors operate on the assumption that clients have defined goals and a clear understanding of their financial circumstances, to begin with. For many, that is not the case. Answering questions like, "Is your risk tolerance low, moderate, or high?" presupposes the user has a fundamental knowledge of investment concepts and the real-life implications of each option they choose.

We describe the success of M-PESA in Kenya and the subsequent disappointment when M-PESA was replicated in Tanzania. We show how emerging markets are likely to be more different from than similar to one another. Thus, companies should consider a strategy of exploration as they attempt to expand within emerging markets. 

In 2008, a year after launching in Kenya, Vodafone attempted to replicate this success in neighboring Tanzania, a country that resembled Kenya in many important ways—size of population (40+ million) and main languages spoken (Swahili and English), as well as levels of literacy, unbanked, and mobile phone usage. But M-PESA in Tanzania did not grow on anything like the scale and scope of M-PESA in Kenya