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The utilisation of Ethio Pay branded electronic cards will harness the hard currency payment to foreign companies, according to the company's management.

Currently, over six million people are using ATM Visa cards. Founded in 2011, with a capital of 80 million Br, Eth-Switch facilitated transactions worth 2.9 billion Br in the past fiscal year.

The utilisation of Ethio Pay branded electronic cards will harness the hard currency payment to foreign companies, according to the company's management.

The overall benefits for businesses and customers include: Safety and security: Customers can pay via their mobile phone and retailers can rest assured knowing that extensive security measures are in place. Speed: It’s fast, as customers simply need to scan the display code at a till point. Convenience: There is no need to carry cash around and paying via SnapScan offers a frictionless experience. Cashless: As customers won’t be using cash, it is easier for businesses to authenticate and formalise transactions. SnapScan is a mobile payments solution with a variety of payment options available for retailers.

The overall benefits for businesses and customers include: Safety and security: Customers can pay via their mobile phone and retailers can rest assured knowing that extensive security measures are in place. Speed: It’s fast, as customers simply need to scan the display code at a till point. Convenience: There is no need to carry cash around and paying via SnapScan offers a frictionless experience. Cashless: As customers won’t be using cash, it is easier for businesses to authenticate and formalise transactions. SnapScan is a mobile payments solution with a variety of payment options available for retailers.

SnapScan offers quick, easy, and secure mobile payment solutions to retailers so their customers can enjoy the convenience of paying on the fly. Mobile payments can also mean that staff spend less time processing payments, as SnapScan can be integrated with a variety of leading point-of-sale systems. Businesses that offer delivery services can give their drivers a lanyard with a SnapCode (unique QR code) so customers can pay for goods or services during delivery. Retailers that have an online store can use SnapScan to offer a streamlined and consistent experience to their customers across multiple platforms.

​​Stellenbosch University (SU) is the first university in South Africa to make use of the SnapScan in-app payment solutions for payments on its campuses, so that students no longer have to carry cash with them for certain payments.

SnapScap is a mobile application that enables cashless payments. Initially two of SnapScan's in-app payment mechanisms will be available for students to do bill payments for their student fees, as well as for pre-paid internet and printer credits. These payments previously had to be made (in cash or with card) at the University's cashiers in the central administration building

Apart from SnapScan in-app payments, students also have an online option on the SU's website where they have the options of pre-paids (for internet, meals, washing, printing credits and rides) and bill payments (for student fees).

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya. The new tax would be levied on all cash transfers but was largely targeted at M-Pesa, which controlled around 80 percent of the cash transfer market.

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya.

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya

Abacus, the #1 mid-market expense reporting software listed on G2 Crowd, is the only truly real-time expense reporting solution on the market. It is the easiest way for a company to reimburse its teams, implement their expense policy, and reconcile corporate credit cards throughout the month. More than 1,000 customers use Abacus, including GLG, Coinbase, and Betterment.

The purpose of this study was to establish the effects of implementation of Fintech strategies on competitiveness in the banking sector in Kenya

Customers, when purchasing, simply need to scan a QR (quick response) code in store using their phones. And the customer can use any MasterCard or Visa card to sign up. Ehlers added: “We tried to design a product which allowed absolutely everybody to be part of the formal side of the economy.”

In an interview with How we made it in Africa, Ehlers explained: “A sizable part of why we built the product the way we did really relates to how the economy of South Africa functions. So to give one example, we built SnapScan so the merchant selling the products doesn’t need any special hardware at all. No point of sales system is required.” Merchants who don’t have bank accounts can redeem payments at any Standard Bank ATM or selected supermarkets.

SnapScan’s partnership with Standard Bank has allowed the company to grow faster. But Ehlers and his team are still required to adapt to the differences between the corporate and start-up worlds. He explained: “A start-up can quickly make a decision and then two hours later start implementing, whereas in a large corporation there is a process, things move a lot slower. Politics are involved and different people – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just the reality.”

As part of Lumkani’s mission to mitigate the loss of life and property caused by fires in South Africa and across the globe, we implement large scale roll-outs of our fire detection system into urban informal settlements and townships.

Before Lumkani introduced Fire Cover in 2016, there was little hope for households and businesses that had been excluded from insurance cover, to quickly rebuild, refurnish and return to a state of dignity.

Nigerian digital financial platform, Carbon (formerly Paylater) is taking big steps to introduce its revamped financial services into Ghana. The online lender is looking to hire a new country manager for Ghana and this suggests the company is looking to introduce its new services like PayVest into Ghana.

Cloud computing The banking, payment and insurance industries rely heavily on the outsourcing of various operational processes to cloud computing service providers (eg, Amazon, Google and Microsoft). The increasing reliance of the European financial sector on foreign entities has recently given French and European regulators cause for concern. In 2017, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its "Recommendations on Outsourcing to Cloud Service Providers. These recommendations were later included in the update of the EBA Guidelines on Outsourcing Arrangements (EBA/GL/2019/02), which are fully implemented at the national level by the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR). The EBA guidelines require banking and financial institutions to enter into written agreements with their service providers (including cloud service providers). These agreements should notably include provisions detailing the reporting obligations of the service provider and the audit rights of the competent authorities. In practice, the main cloud service providers are reluctant to enter into agreements which comply with the requirements of the EBA guidelines. This has prompted French and European banking and financial institutions to report these issues to their regulators. This review could lead to the drafting of a European regulation or directive determining standard contractual provisions which would be mandatorily included in agreements with cloud service providers.

BCTS has successfully implemented its HelloCash mobile banking platform and 8 000 agents network with 6 local banks and 2 microfinance institutions, making it the largest financial network in the country.This achievement has gained recognition from the UN initiative for financial inclusion, which was substantiated by the visit of UN ambassador for financial inclusion, her Royal Majesty Queen Maxima of the Netherlands in May 2019.

With 17 strong through partnerships, across multiple sectors and an ownership structure in full compliance with the Ethiopian regulations, BelCash Payments-As-A-Platform model spurred numerous “HelloServices”. These services include airtime eTop-up, Pay-As-You-Go solar, Healthcare, eCommerce, Jobs, Entertainment, and many more, providing the Ethiopian population access to essential services through the HelloCash platform and agents network.

BelCash Technology Solutions Ltd. (BCTS) was established in Ethiopia in 2011, as a registered Value-Added Service (VAS) . It'main activity is to provides its digital technology platforms to businesses as a service (PaaS).

Belcash provides an ICT platform to banks and coordinates the roll out, with special focus on rural areas. LOI with local banks are signed for implementation. The project is advised by a former CEO of a large Dutch Development Bank and 2 international banks sit in the advisory board.

Financial-technology companies are changing the face of finance. Over the past ten years, what started mostly as disruption in the payments space has expanded to every corner of finance. Even areas once assumed to be safe are seeing new entrants and competitive threats. Wealth and asset management, wholesale banking, capital markets, regulation and risk (“regtech”), and trade finance are just the most recent areas to see innovation driven by small technology-first players.

Whether fintechs ultimately win or lose significant market share may be beside the point; they are redefining customer expectations and continue to create new business models. As fintechs are frequently building their entire technology stacks from the ground up, they are highlighting incumbent financial institutions’ weaknesses not only in digital user experiences but also in operational efficiency. Whether a new digital brokerage wins or loses may not matter when customer expectations around brokerage fees change. A retail foreign-exchange fintech having 5 or 50 percent of the market may matter less than retail FX margins disappearing for everyone. Whether the next crops of “neobanks” disrupt retail banking may be less important than their highlighting for users and customers the possibilities of a modern, digital-first experience.

f your downside potential from disruptive threats. Incumbents can choose to invest in companies they partner with or to focus on areas they know well or interesting adjacencies. We frequently advise clients to find ways of keeping corporate venture-capital groups slightly at arm’s length to attract skilled managers, and we recently have seen increased interest in investing in established outside managers who focus on financial technology. Transform yourself to be more like a fintech. Digital transformation is a difficult but necessary process for most incumbent financial institutions. Redesigning core infrastructure to be more modular and dynamic, driving a new agile operating model, and upgrading technology and workforce skills are all necessary to compete with outside threats, fintech and otherwise. Build your own (internal) fintech. The road for transformations is normally measured in years, but the competitive threat from fintechs is today. Increasingly, we are seeing financial institutions try to beat fintechs at their own game or self-disrupt areas of their business before others can. The key to success in new digital business building is to combine the agility, speed, and talent of a start-up with the “unfair advantage” of an incumbent by leveraging existing assets (e.g. customers, distribution, or infrastructure). Serve the fintechs. A few financial institutions can find their competitive advantage in creating scaled, efficient technology and operations to enable others to embed financial services in their customer experiences. This “banking as a service” business model depends on finding a profitable path to white labeling but draws on the inspiration of large tech platforms. Enabling the customer experiences of others has quickly moved beyond just enabling fintechs to also working with big technology companies, retailers, telecommunications companies, and beyond. Ignore fintechs. Although ignoring the competition is rarely the right choice, some businesses are built on moats—frequently regulatory—that are difficult to disrupt or they play within narrow markets. Companies should prioritize where they need to focus and in doing so know when they need to pay attention and when they need to avoid the distraction of disrupters.

M-Pesa development, and the strategies employed to engage with different actors in the financial services sector. Purposive theoretical sampling strategy (Strauss 1987Strauss, Anselm L. 1987. Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511557842 [Crossref], [Google Scholar]) was used to identify relevant sources of data both for the secondary data collection process and identification of informants for the interviews.

“Through our digital platforms, we aim to make available a one stop solution to our customers in terms of funds transfer and with the inclusion of SimbaPay, our customers will now send money to friends and family across the world at the comfort of their mobile phones,” added Mr. Kantaria.

Through SimbaPay, Prime Bank customers will now be able to instantly and securely send money directly to bank accounts or mobile wallets across 15 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia including India, United Kingdom, China (WeChat Pay), Germany, Uganda among others. Commenting on the partnership, SimbaPay’s Head of Operations Victor Karanja noted that the service will provide a seamless platform for Prime Bank’s customer base to send money abroad at the click of a button.

The company makes its money by charging a small transaction fee to the retailer on each purchase. This fee varies. “We take a small transaction fee, much like the acquiring component to merchant transactions,” Ehlers says. SnapScan has a partnership with Standard Bank, which means it can process transactions at “competitive rates”, he adds. In addition to transaction fees, SnapScan offers its customers the option of accessing analytics or running loyalty programmes, both of which are billed as add-ons.

SnapScan co-founder, 28-year-old Kobus Ehlers, says there are a number of benefits to this approach for retailers. “It takes about 30 seconds to sign up. We issue a QR code, which you print, and you’re done.” Merchants without bank accounts can cash out their takings at the end of the day. “Customers can pay with the app, the retailer can then get a voucher code at the end of the day that they can punch in at a Standard Bank ATM — or hand over at a Spar — and get cash.” If customers don’t have the app installed, scanning the QR code will take them to the relevant app store where they can download it.

If customers don’t have the app installed, scanning the QR code will take them to the relevant app store where they can download it.

AI-powered ChatbotsBanks and most of the businesses in the consumer industry have to deal with so many customer inquiries. It requires them to set up dedicated staff members or a complete call center to keep answering the questions that may not directly benefit their business. The artificial intelligence relieves the financial institutions in this hassle with modern-technology equipped chatbots. These virtual assistants are smart in understanding the user queries and providing them with the most viable answer.

New technologies, like machine learning/artificial intelligence, predictive behavioral analytics, and data-driven marketing, will take the guesswork and habit out of financial decisions. "Learning" apps will not only learn the habits of users, often hidden to themselves, but will engage users in learning games to make their automatic, unconscious spending and saving decisions better. Fintech is also a keen adaptor of automated customer service technology, utilizing chatbots to and AI interfaces to assist customers with basic task and also keep down staffing costs. Fintech is also being leveraged to fight fraud by leveraging information about payment history to flag transactions that are outside the norm.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the pricing strategies of French FinTech Firms (FFFs) using quantitative descriptive and correlational research methods. Based on a representative sample of 246 FFF, the study provided consistent support for the hypotheses, which argues that FFFs with high price-setting power may implement a combination of the price-setting strategy (PSS) “skimming” and the price-setting practice (PSP) “value-informed”. FFFs applying “market-based” PSSs tend to use “competition-informed” PSP preferring “pay-per-use” price-setting model (PSM). Whilst FFFs who apply “penetration” PSS tend to use “cost-informed” PSP and “pay-per-use” PSM. The findings support founders and senior management in their pricing decisions. This paper contributes to the existing literature on pricing strategies of early-stage high-tech companies. There is a need for further research about the change of pricing strategies during the lifecycle of a firm using for example a longitudinal quantitative study.