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Industry leaders from across the African and global FinTech industry will gather at Finnovation Africa: Ethiopia 2017 where they will seek to harness the growing momentum around digital financial services into more inclusive and productive economies across Sub‐Saharan Africa.”

The convergence of mobile telephony, banking services, and information systems creates significant economic opportunities on a global scale. While the adoption of mobile banking and mobile money emerged on the global scene as a tool to promote financial inclusion, new developments in the industry have created additional possibilities for this type of technology to revolutionize the practices and experiences of business owners in the Third World. This paper calls attention to the different ways in which mobile banking services and mobile payment systems are able to create value for their consumers. An empirical case study is developed using the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (City of Accra) that details the experiences of MTN Mobile Money users.

At Thndr we believe that everyone should have access to financial services and that means access to different products that can make your money work for you.  That’s why we’ve partnered up with Azimut, one of Europe’s leading independent asset managers to bring you the new Egypt-focused fixed income mutual fund AZ-Savings. AZ Savings is one of the first funds of its kind, where you can invest in daily certificates that you can redeem weekly—no more liquidity worries.

Aujourd’hui plus de 3 000 agriculteurs sont inscrits sur la plate-forme mobile. En 2016, en travaillant avec un partenaire financier, FarmDrive a permis d’attribuer environ $130 000 de prêts à 400 agriculteurs.

According to SimbaPay, China is Kenya's largest trading partner with businesses in Kenya importing more than $4 billion worth of goods from China last year alone. As it stands, sending money to China from Kenya takes several days, in some cases requiring a person to physically visit an agent to access their money. The new service overcomes those barriers. The companies also said it will result in traders in Kenya being able to replenish stock faster, which in turn will bolster trade between the two nations.

For a successful model, the Arab World can look to Kenya’s development of mobile money or “M-Pesa”. In many ways, the elements that lead to M-Pesa’s success in Kenya are already present in the Arab World. Young people in MENA are digitally savvy, are active on social media and are some of the heaviest users of mobile phones in the world.

The successful adoption of M-Pesa in Kenya reverberated across the African startup scene. It acted as a catalyzer and a signal for young entrepreneurs in Kenya and Africa as a whole: revolutionary ideas could be successfully implemented in Africa and generate both business opportunities and a development path for local communities.

The company is keen to work with companies specialising in the financial technology (fintech) solutions field, to contribute to the development of the Egyptian capital market sector. The most prominent of these partnerships includes a contract with the Egyptian Company for Information Dissemination (EGID). The latter company has been the approved authority for distributing information to EGX listed companies in the country for more than 20 years. “By using technology and introducing an easy-to-use application, we hope to remove all barriers users face, whether by making the account opening process easier or reducing costs,” said Saif Amr, co-founder of Thndr. He added, “We help companies by facilitating dealing in the Egyptian Stock Exchange, but we intend to offer other investment options soon to suit all segments.”

We are starting with Egyptian equities, but we intend to quickly introduce alternative investment options to suit different risk/reward and involvement preferences

Thndr, an Egypt based startup, is now poised to formally launch operation after securing the first new brokerage license granted in the country in over a decade. The startup closed its pre-seed round last December, with investors including Y-Combinator, 4DX Ventures, Endure Capital, The Raba Partnership, and MSA Capital. The startup has just acquired the necessary licensing from the Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), making it the first company to acquire a brokerage license in Egypt since 2008.

"Our commitment of up to $1 million in funding to address the growing wealth inequality in the United States is not only the right thing to do, but a necessity,"

Kiva's crowdfunding platform, Kiva.org, allows individuals to lend as little as $25 to make a difference in someone's life. Kiva Protocol aims to establish financial identity and credit history for unbanked populations using distributed ledger technology (DLT), with its inaugural project currently being implemented in Sierra Leone.

Kiva, a nonprofit founded in 2005, has chosen to make Waco a “Kiva Hub,” the first city in Texas to receive such a designation

He welcomed small business needing a loan up to $15,000 to contact Startup Waco, headquartered at 605 Austin Ave.

The Waco City Council gave the local Kiva Hub a financial kick-start, awarding it a $50,000 grant. Passavant said he hopes to approach individuals and foundations about putting additional money behind Kiva.

We work across Africa and Asia, and in 2019 alone, we facilitated crop and livestock insurance cover to 1.1mln farmers and have offered our products in 11 markets from Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique. Since starting in 2015 our products have reached over 3.4mln households. Our Founders work in insurance has been recognized by several international awards including the Financial Times/IFC Award for Sustainable Finance, the Singapore Fintech Festival, Womens World Banking, Credit Suisse, and InsureTech3.0.

Funding Pula: Insuretech Startup Closes $6M Series A Funding to Scale Up Business Across Africa 0 SharesShareTweetSharePin The African Insuretech service provider, Pula, has recently closed a US$6 million Series A funding round led by TLcom Capital and had participation from Women’s World Banking. It specializes in digital as well as agric insurance to derisk smallholder farmers across Africa. This new round of investment to the insuretech startup will be used to scale up operations in the company’s existing 13 markets across Africa. Pula has so far impacted over 4.3 million farmers on the continent and the new funding will help push its expansion into Asia to power resilience and profitability for Asian smallholder farmers. Pula was launched by Rose Goslinga and Thomas Njeru in 2015, to design and deliver innovative agricultural insurance and digital products to help smallholders farmers improve their farming practices, endure climate risks and bolster their incomes. This has become necessary because for smallholder farmers in emerging markets, the traditional method of calculating insurance through farm visits is often expensive, meaning they are often neglected from financial protection against climate risks.

Family Bank Limited, a leading bank in Kenya, has partnered with London-based financial technology firm SimbaPay to launch an instant money transfer service from Kenya to China through WeChat – a service that will help boost Kenya-China trade. Over seven million customers and businesses in Kenya will now access SimbaPay’s international money transfer service to send money to China’s WeChat Pay from Family Bank’s PesaPap mobile banking application and USSD service. Non-customers too will enjoy the service via a dedicated PayBill number 261059 on MPESA.

In addition to the China (WeChat) service, SimbaPay also supports money transfer to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ghana, Nigeria, Madagascar, Niger and India. 

China is Kenya’s biggest trading partner. In 2017 alone, businesses in Kenya imported well over USD 4 billion worth of goods from China. The current existing solutions for sending money to China take multiple days to reach the recipient’s bank account, with some requiring the supplier to physically visit an agent to collect their money. This new service easily overcomes these barriers.

FinTech companies such as PayPal, Visa, Square, Mastercard and others are expanding cryptocurrency (crypto) and blockchain capabilities but several factors could limit widespread acceptance in the near term, says Fitch Ratings. We expect strategic crypto investments to have a limited near-term effect on credit profiles, given modest capital deployed and the long ramp time. However, adding crypto capabilities opens up incremental revenue streams for these companies, even if the return on investment over time and compliance risks are uncertain.

Vigor Crypto Labs set up to formalize the testing of the trading strategies in preparation for B2B commercialization WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Xalles Holdings Inc. (OTC: XALL), a fintech holding company providing technology and financial services solutions, announces strategic initiatives to capitalize on the growing digital asset and cryptocurrency market. 

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global big data market is currently valued at almost $140 billion. By 2025, it’s expected to grow to $230 billion at a CAGR of 10.6%. This makes FinTech app development a priority for companies that are transforming financial services with big data analytics.FinTech is one of the industries that uses big data extensively due to its complex services, use of IoT technologies, and need for risk analysis and security, which requires fast operations on large amounts of data.Big data developers help FinTechs gather an overwhelming amount of information and derive insights that really matter in the decision-making process.

The MoneyFellows app is pretty simple. You create a profile and go through an onboarding process, which includes a financial assessment which determines each user’s maximum limit of money circle they can join. From there, each user can browse the available money circles by searching and filtering by monthly payment, total cash-out and the cash-out schedule most suitable to them. Once you’ve joined a money circle - and that money circle is complete - there are several ways to both send and receive money, including bank transfers, credit card payments, mobile wallets and Fawry. Some corporate companies have also signed up with MoneyFellows, allowing their employees to have their money circle dues directly taken from their salaries.

With steady growth in our user base, we have been working hard over the past year in order to optimize and perfect our product and are now ready to begin our scaling journey. We will dedicate the money from this bridge round to raise greater awareness for MoneyFellows, in order to allow a much greater number of users to access our application and meet their saving and financial needs

MoneyFellows with its group pooling platform for credit and savings is digitizing the entire process of money circles with a scoring model that compliments current offline model, making it more scalable, safe and efficient.

The FinTech landscape continues to evolve, with new and continuing litigation related to consumer financial services platform innovation, the economics of cryptotokens, features of a blockchain, and allegedly disruptive cryptocurrency trading practices.

Latest figures put the value of the cryptocurrency market at almost $240bn in 2019, nearly double the 2018 figure of $128bn. Could this mean that the global crypto market is starting to move into the mainstream? Significantly, the sector is enjoying rapid growth globally, with the UK, Nigeria, Australia, Canada, Mexico and India all experiencing a recent surge in users. Crypto is also starting to attract interest from institutional investors, which see it as possible insurance against the global rise in quantitative easing.

The big banking brands have shown little interest in cryptocurrency to date. In part, this is due to their general aversion to high levels of risk and an institutionalised culture ill suited to digital change and innovation – but there is also a legitimate fear that they will fall foul of financial regulators. 

It stands to reason that cryptocurrency exchanges are well positioned and strongly motivated to exploit the narrowing gap between crypto and fiat – because they have first-move advantage. Having already built huge cash reserves and crypto-familiar customer bases, it would be relatively straightforward technically for them to add on banking services.