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WorldRemit has compiled this list to bring attention to all those who have managed to make a positive difference during this exceptionally challenging year. The company aims to support migrant communities as well as their family and friends every day, whilst celebrating their many successes throughout the year, and for many years to come.

WorldRemit celebrated Philippine Independence Day by highlighting the many achievements of the Filipino diaspora which included one of the youngest ever recipients of the Royal Bank of Canada’s Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award.

Mukuru and WorldRemit announced a deepening of their existing partnership. Having initially launched the alliance in Zimbabwe, the two companies aim to expand their collaboration for cash remittances into Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi and Botswana. This is an important next step in furthering the delivery of world-class services and financial inclusion across the African continent.

ZEEPAY is planning to use the finance to continue to scale and roll out its services across the continent and extend its global reach by launching in the UK in 2021.

Digital financeAs the global economy recovers from COVID-19, one particular area of focus for FinTech is financial inclusion. According to the World Bank, there are currently around 1.7 billion unbanked individuals worldwide, and FinTechs will be central to efforts to integrate these people into the global banking system.Doing so will help to mitigate the economic and social impact of the pandemic. According to Deloitte, FinTechs, in strategic partnerships with financial institutions, retailers and government sectors across jurisdictions, can help democratise financial services by providing basic financial services in a fair and transparent way to economically vulnerable populations.Digital finance is also expanding in other areas. Health concerns in the COVID-19 era have made physical cash payments less practical, opening the door to an increase in digital payments and e-wallets. Though cash use was predicted to decline in any case, COVID-19 has hurried that decline, due to concerns that handing over money can cause human to human transmission of the virus. According to a Mastercard survey looking at the implications of the coronavirus pandemic, 82 percent of respondents worldwide viewed contactless as the cleaner way to pay, and 74 percent said they will continue to use contactless payment post-pandemic.In addition, improved ‘know your customer’ services are required to counter the rise in digital fraud and cyber crime since the beginning of the outbreak. As more of the global economic and financial system continues to move online, cyber defences will become even more crucial to protect data. Security-conscious FinTechs are designing their products with this in mind – even if face-to-face meetings and processes do return. Given the rising reliance on technology, digital transformation will be a primary focus for FIs in the months and years ahead. Whereas previous efforts to integrate technology may have been limited in scope, many FIs are awakening to the fact that in order to deliver an efficient, effective and sustainable banking service, they must adopt a more holistic approach to digital transformation, which includes utilising FinTech.

While CGAP could not confirm the profiles of borrowers in Ghana, experience in East Africa suggests that many are borrowing from formal lenders for the first time. JUMO, one of Ghana’s most successful digital lenders, also operates in Tanzania, where it found that 81 percent of its borrowers had never before borrowed from a formal financial institution. The ability to reach excluded customers and help them to build formal credit histories has always been touted as the promise of digital credit. And while more data are necessary before forming any conclusions about the potential impact of digital loans in West Africa, the results from Ghana are cause for optimism.

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Our pilot with Pula revealed that most data sets in the countries where Pula works still focus on larger farm sizes, not the very small farms of poorer, vulnerable farmers, which reduces variation in the model. Additionally, if yield data are not available for a long period or across climatic regions, the predictability of the model is further reduced. This innovation holds tremendous promise for inclusion but will need space for experimentation to perfect.

Founded in 2015, AgroCenta is an online sales solution for smallholder farmers, with two offerings – supply chain platform AgroTrade, and financial inclusion service AgroPay.

Disrupt Africa reported yesterday AgroCenta was one of six African startups awarded non-equity funding by the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator. Though the startup’s co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Francis Obirikorang declined to disclose the breakdown of equity versus grant cash, Disrupt Africa can confirm that the GSMA input is worth around US$250,000. Obirikorang said the funds will be used to scale up AgroCenta’s operations in Ghana, while the GSMA grant is more specifically geared towards the AgroPay platform, which provides any smallholder farmer who has traded using AgroTrade with a financial statement they can use to get access to finance.

This funding was secured from UK charity Shell Foundation, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), AV Ventures and Rabo Foundation. “This is a significant milestone for AgroCenta, having the support of leading institutions, particularly with the COVID-19 backdrop, underlining the strength of AgroCenta and the importance of its mission. The demand for agricultural raw materials from offtakers in the brewery, manufacturing and consumer sector is increasing exponentially because of the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions that were put in place by the government of Ghana, hence this capital injection will help to secure purchases at fair and transparent prices from smallholders — a much needed lifeline for many who are at the proverbial bottom of the pyramid”. Francis Obirikorang, AgroCenta’s CEO and Co-Founder Michael Ocansey said while highlighting the importance and criticality of this investment.

According to Ezinne Obikile, SystemSpecs Executive Director, Infrastructure and Payments Gateway; “SystemSpecs is committed to driving financial inclusion and providing payment convenience to all, which underscores this strategic partnership with Paga to extend a wide range of financial solutions and services to customers everywhere, even at a time as this.”

Also commenting, Jay Alabraba, Co-founder and Director of Business Development, Paga said: “In our commitment to make payments easier for all Nigerians and businesses, we are pleased to collaborate with SystemSpecs. Our goal is to always provide an improved experience to our customers everywhere, by leveraging digital technology. This collaboration would further help us meet the needs of individuals who seek to make various bill payments, including those in emerging markets.”

We use advanced data science and machine learning to create the fastest and leanest financial services infrastructure.

Our partners use our technology stack to offer savings, lending and insurance products to entrepreneurs in emergingmarkets.These next-generation products give anyone with a cell phone and mobile wallet access to unprecedented financial choice, enabling millions of people to prosper, build their businesses and drive economic growth.

At JUMO we connect people to opportunities. Two billion people worldwide have limited access to formal financial services such as borrowing and saving. We’ve built a large-scale, multi-sided technology platform and designed progressive financial choices to reach them. We use their digital footprint to create a financial identity using only behavioural data.

Operating in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan, the fintech plans to expand its offering and service to Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. 

We’re optimistic about the possibilities in these markets and continue to see huge growth opportunities in Africa, with the potential to replicate our successes in other markets over the longer term.”

Since 2017, AgroCenta has successfully completed two rounds of funding to the tune of $750,000 to expand operations in Ghana. In 2017, AgroCenta won the Seedstars Global Competition against other 72 startups from emerging markets across the globe. AgroCenta has grown its farmer base to 45,000 providing additional services of access to finance for smallholder farmers, bringing smallholder farmers onto the financial sector to enjoy services such as crop insurance, micro lending/input financing, mobile payments through mobile money and finally pensions schemes targeted at farmers and beneficiaries in the informal sector with special attention to women and youth. Since 2017, AgroCenta has helped over 28,000 farmers sell over 20,000MT of commodities to large, medium and small scale buyers across the country.   In December 2018, AgroCenta won a grant of $250,000 from GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Fund to further build its financial inclusion platform AgroPay targeted at rural smallholder farmers.

“The demand for agricultural raw materials from offtakers in the brewery, manufacturing and consumer sector is increasing exponentially because of the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions that were put in place by the government of Ghana, hence this capital injection will help to secure purchases at fair and transparent prices from smallholders — a much needed lifeline for many who are at the proverbial bottom of the pyramid.”

This is a significant milestone for AgroCenta, having the support of leading institutions, particularly with the COVID-19 backdrop, underlining the strength of AgroCenta and the importance of its mission,” they said. 

M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania. It has since expanded to Afghanistan, South Africa, India and in 2014 to Eastern Europe. M-Pesa allows users with a national ID card or passport to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a mobile device.

M-Pesa allows users with a national ID card or passport to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a mobile device.

M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania. It has since expanded to Afghanistan, South Africa, India and in 2014 to Eastern Europe. M-Pesa allows users with a national ID card or passport to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a mobile device.

Each and every transaction done on the M-PESA platform is electronic and can therefore be monitored by Safaricom, which runs its own bank-grade anti-money laundering system. Even a cash-in or a cash-out operation has an electronic leg and is captured by the system. The Central Bank of Kenya gets regular reports on M-PESA transactions, as it does from other payment service providers.

Cash merchants are mainly super users, who resell their own working capital balances, with no more access to the M-PESA platform than any other customers, except that they have higher transaction limits.

Average monthly M-Pesa transactions, including Safaricom, was $24.2 billion (Sh2.6 trillion) and represented a growth of 57.8 per cent.

Revenues from the global mobile financial service M-Pesa have recovered following the reinstatement of fees on person-to-person transactions on the platform.

Vodacom says revenue from the international M-Pesa business, excluding Kenya, rose 10 per cent to Sh8.5 billion in the quarter ended December compared to Sh7.7 billion a year earlier.

As a result of their potent blend of trail-blazing technology and disruptive innovation, FinTech players have the ability to accelerate the digital transformation of financial services in Africa and, in turn, further spur the major existing banks to rapidly ramp-up their own innovative approaches to meet the financial needs of under-served markets across the continent. FinTech players are increasingly becoming an important part of the fabric of Africa’s financial services industry. In addition, the leading banks on the continent are now harnessing innovative technology to meet market needs and are also collaborating with FinTech start-ups to better connect with under-served consumers, improve financial inclusion and provide a platform to scale much faster.