Group items tagged

Mukuru is uniquely focused on serving low- and middle-income migrants who typically send money home to their families to cover basic living expenses and who otherwise rely on informal and inconsistent channels such as buses, taxis, friends, and family. Through Mukuru, customers can send money through more reliable channels via bank transfer, cash deposit, credit/debit card or via a Mukuru Money Card and/or mobile money wallet. Friends and family members of these customers can then receive the money through the same methods (cash collection, bank transfer, cash to card, or mobile money wallet).

Mukuru is uniquely focused on serving low- and middle-income migrants who typically send money home to their families to cover basic living expenses and who otherwise rely on informal and inconsistent channels such as buses, taxis, friends, and family. Through Mukuru, customers can send money through more reliable channels via bank transfer, cash deposit, credit/debit card or via a Mukuru Money Card and/or mobile money wallet. Friends and family members of these customers can then receive the money through the same methods (cash collection, bank transfer, cash to card, or mobile money wallet).

While financial inclusion in the country has increased, many farmers remain excluded. Limited financing for farmers is due, in part, to a lack of available credible risk-assessment information for financial institutions. Many small farmers are unbanked and off the financial grid, without credit profiles to verify or back up details on their annual income, business expenses or yields.

So how does Mama Money offer their service at 5% whereas Mukuru, arguably the most popular service over the South Africa-Zimbabwe corridor, charges double this? From our experience of testing these two services, we noted a few key differences in how they operate which is likely to drive the cost differential between the two services. These differences include: · Mama Money maintain low overhead costs. Mama Money operate a single branch in Cape Town whereas Mukuru operate at least seven of their own branches nationally and they also operate through the Inter Africa branch network · Mama Money offer limited support beyond registration. In comparison, Mukuru operate a large 24 hour call centre and live chat function that supports and facilitates transfers. These support functions are no doubt very expensive to operate · Mama Money have a single partner organisation in Zimbabwe. Mama Money only have a single partner in Zimbabwe, CABS bank, whereas Mukuru have partnerships with a number of banks, retailers and mobile wallets. That said, if Mama Money’s Facebook comments are anything to go by, they may be adding more partner organisations in Zimbabwe, so this factor may soon be invalidated So while Mama Money’s competitors charge considerably higher fees, in the case of Mukuru, these higher fees are associated with some value-added benefits for the customer, for instance 24hr support on transactions for the sender and, for the recipient, a choice in how to receive the money.

Given the different attitudes of investors toward digitalization, robo-advising can be segmented into two main sectors. The first one is pure robo-advising, which is completely free from human intervention in the advisory process. This results in considerably lower fees compared to traditional advisory services, attracting lower-income clientele. As reported by Ringe and Ruof (2018), pure RAs charged fees ranging between 0.4% (US market) and 0.8% (European markets), compared to human financial advising costing circa 1–2%. Pure RAs have become quite popular due to their propensity to avoid conflict of interests due to automation. Fisch et al. (2017) highlight that RAs are less exposed to conflict of interests due to their higher independence, smaller bias to recommend actively managed funds that generate commissions as a potential additional expense, more transparent cost structures, lower minimum investment requirements, and 24/7 availability.

The new product — which piggy-backs on WeChat’s messaging service — is aimed at Kenyan merchants who purchase goods from China, Kenya’s largest import source.

The new product — which piggy-backs on WeChat’s messaging service — is aimed at Kenyan merchants who purchase goods from China, Kenya’s largest import source.

The staggering thing about Monzo’s raise – and it speaks volumes about where crowdfunding and fintech have reached – is that it did not need to raise the £20m from any of us on the street. In October – i.e. just two months shy of the raise – the bank had closed an £85m round led by VC firm Accel. Raising £20m is no walk in the park. You need to build a prospectus, which is a lengthy and expensive process. Monzo’s crowdfunding raise capped all investments at £2,000, meaning the team chose to have more investors to look after. 

FarmDrive combats this lack of financial visibility by calculating alternative credit scores for Kenyan smallholder farmers. The startup requires users to input their expenses, revenue and yield via SMS and creates a platform for farmers to record business activity. FarmDrive then uses a complex algorithm to combine individual financial information with additional factors like the climate in the farmer’s region.