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The device is a heat detector and not an ill-suited smoke detector. In a fire situation, the device will ring alerting the family inside enabling them to be proactive before the fire becomes unmanageable. After 20 seconds the device transmits a signal to all devices in neighbouring homes up to 60 metres away creating a community-wide response to the fire

Fintech, at the heart of the banking sector revolutionObviously, Fintechs and traditional banks adopt very different strategies. Indeed, while traditional institutions have a long-term vision (analysis of the financial market, risk amortization), neobanks prefer immediate action.Thus, we can consider that there are two categories of Fintech on the market. On the one hand, regulated companies that ensure compliance with regulatory constraints, and on the other, those that adopt a completely different strategy based on customer satisfaction.The first category positions itself as a direct competitor of banking establishments, while the second opts for cooperation and encourages the buyout or majority stake.Fintechs base their strategy on customer dissatisfaction, especially with their bank . These new shoots seek to improve every aspect of the banking relationship, as a priority, by neglecting issues related to organization, compliance and profitability.However, professionals remain skeptical. Do these FinTechs really hope to succeed in a few months, where several players have been striving for years? By this we mean the fact of wanting to change the regulations of the sector or even the constitution of a team of experts within a short time.So far, experts in the banking industry doubt a real revolution in banking regulation.Traditional banks remain priority players in the marketDespite the emergence of remote banking and the new measure on banking mobility , traditional banks remain the majority players in the market. Indeed, new brands are still struggling to reach the same level as a "real" bank.In addition, for the time being, income from investment funds and venture capitalists has not been of much use to the banking sector. Remember, however, that it is thanks to them that certain brands such as Uber, Amazon or Tesla have succeeded.Today, players in e-commerce are using capital increases to compensate for losses, a technique that has not yet been adopted in the banking sector. As a starting point, SoftBank has already started by building up a $ 100 billion fund for banking technology.

Every year, we work to reach around 1 million small farmers with the resources they need to diversify and improve their crops, increase their incomes, and become more resilient in the face of a rapidly changing climate.   Our vision is that small farmers have greater agency over their livelihoods. This means access to the insurance, advice and resources they need to generate enough profit to feed their families and thrive. By supporting Pula, we continue to take steps in this direction — a world in which all small farmers can rest assured their livelihood is safe and they have what they need to prosper and grow.

Abacus allows investors, locally and in the diaspora, to invest in equities, fixed income, unit trust, real estate and unlisted securities in Kenya.

We are looking to cover at least 50% of Africa’s financial markets by 2019. We are an e*trade for Africa.We provide real time data and news, research, analyses and insights, technology driven advisory and community forums with investing leaderboards where you can see, copy or follow other investors’ activity. 

Women constitute the majority of remittance recipients globally and remittances have an impact on both women’s actual income as well as on social norms

Mobile money, a technology-driven innovation in financial services, has profoundly penetrated the financial landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa, including banks. Yet, besides anecdotal evidence, little is known about whether mobile money adoption enhances or worsens bank performance. Combining hand-collected data with balance sheet data from Bankscope for a panel of 170 financial institutions over the period 2009-2015, we find a strong positive and significant relationship between the time elapsed since banks’ adoption of mobile money and their performance considering an array of proxies of bank profitability, efficiency and stability. In further investigations, we show how bank specialization and size alter such an association. Our results are robust to using instrumental variables, controlling for bank and macro level confounding factors, bank fixed effects and considering alternative measures of bank performance and mobile money adoption. Furthermore, we show that enhanced income diversification and broadened access to deposits are possible channels through which banks involved in mobile money improve their performance. Overall, our findings highlight the bright side of cooperation between banks and mobile network operators in the provision of mobile money.

Drought spells disaster for many farmers in the developing world as most lack crop insurance. No rain means no income, no food and not enough resources to replant the next year.

Machine learning is a critical component of this process, as it allows us to enhance our predictive ability to better identify these qualifying customers. As a result, we are making significant strides towards our goal of creating the world’s leanest and lowest-cost banking infrastructure. This helps our bank partners offer loans at the lowest possible rate, and it helps our customers to achieve higher-yield savings. We’ve proven that our model works. Twelve million customers in Africa and Asia have saved or borrowed on the JUMO platform, and roughly 70% of these customers are micro and small businesses. We’re incredibly proud of our progress so far – but we know there’s more we can do.

To test our approach, we looked at Ghana, running new and advanced machine learning algorithms on signals associated with a pool of lending applicants. The goal was to identify combinations of signals — from income size and deposit frequency to mobile phone battery life and mobile wallet transaction patterns — that would serve as more accurate indicators of likely fraud than existing models.

Through AgroCenta’s CropChain platform, smallholder farmers can execute transactions with accurate information and provide reliable access to financing, inputs and knowledge on agricultural best practices. AgroCenta has increased crop yields of farmers by 40% and increased the average CropChain farmer’s income by 35%.

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.

Pula is providing radically restructured agriculture insurance for smallhold farmers in Africa. Using satellite technology and data to provide previously uninsured landowners with a better safety net, Pula policies are free for the farmers. Premiums are paid by input companies or farm aggregators whose business interests are served by protecting farmers’ incomes.

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.

Founded by Peris Bosire and Rita Kimani, FarmDrive delivers productive digital loans and lay away savings products to smallholder farmers in Kenya, helping them grow their incomes and resilience.

JUMO offers a wide range of services to users in emerging markets via partnerships with other financial institutions

JUMO offers financial services infrastructure to third parties and has served over 15 million customers across countries, including Ghana, Kenya, Pakistan, and Tanzania, and it plans to use the fresh capital to launch new products and expand into new markets: It's set to launch in Bangladesh, India, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria soon, per its website.

South African fintech JUMO scooped up $55 million in funding

PROMOTE Find the most effective channel for your niche In consideration of some financial constraints, fintech companies must distribute their content in the channel where they’ll reach their target audience – and this may not necessarily be the most popular channel. For example, Facebook may have 2.3 billion active users but most of your customers might be a certain type of professional who mostly hang out on LinkedIn, then that may be the best channel for you. Some fintech companies find traction in Reddit, while others are big on Telegram. Find an online space where most of your customers go to seek solutions and tailor your content to reach them.

A study shows that 80% of decision makers prefer to gather information about a company via articles than make their purchase decisions based on advertisement and marketing materials. It’s clear. The most effective marketing strategy used by fintech companies is content marketing. By allocating significant efforts in creating, publishing and distributing digital content tailored to a specific market or audience, customers, as well as bottom line, are served well.

Most fintech companies get the biggest bunch of their sales from the internet. This is because the first thing people do when they need to find out more information about a finance product or service is to search for solution providers online. For this reason, every fintech company needs to have a robust online presence. When buyers start researching, their first aim is to gather information. They don’t necessarily focus on your marketing materials because there are lots of adverts on the internet, which aren’t always reliable

Heya- fawry is an initiative in collaboration with arab women enterprise fund, Baheya, AXA and unilever to empower women, increase their opportunities in the financial market and help them to climb up the financial inclusion pyramid in Egypt Fawry as the leading e-payment network in Egypt is supporting poor and disadvantaged women by training them to become Heya fawry-agents, providing POS machines offering them complementary micro-insurance coverage. Ultimately, this initiative will allow poor unbanked women to have access to life-enhancing financial services (mobile top-ups, bill payments, money transfers, microloan payments, as well as essential nutrition and healthcare goods) directly via their nearest Fawry’s agents to raise income for them and their families and to enhance the well-being of the society. Fawry’s main aim is “to ensure that women access our services in the same extent as men do”