Group items tagged

Fawry Microfinance, a subsidiary of the listed Fawry for Banking and Payment Technology Services, intends to borrow at least EGP 300 million from its existing shareholders, Enterprise cited Fawry CEO Ashraf Sabry on December 14th

Fawry’s subsidiary plans to expand its microfinance portfolio to EGP 500 million by the end of 2021, up from EGP 204 million until September 2020, the news portal added.“We have seen solid growth in 2020 and we see the potential of lending to small businesses to finance their working capital and purchases from suppliers,” Enterprise quoted Sabry as saying.

M-Pesa has 20.5 million customers across a network of 176,000 agents and generates around one-fourth ($531 million) of Safaricom’s ≈ $2.2 billion annual revenues (2018). The company has held nearly 75% of the mobile-money market share in Kenya for nearly a decade and the country has the highest mobile-money usage rates in Africa.

M-Pesa “grew at a blistering pace following its inception in 2007.” [1] In less than two years from its launch, M-Pesa had become the leading money transfer method in the country, with over 50 percent of people sending money via M-Pesa and over 65 percent receiving funds through the system in 2009. By 2015 there were 19.9 million active M-Pesa users, up 18 percent from 2013/14. It is said that 43 percent of Kenya's GDP flowed through M-Pesa, with over 237 million person-to-person transactions.

M-Pesa is an SMS-based system that enables users to deposit, send and withdraw funds using their mobile phone. Customers do not need to have a bank account and can transact at any of the country's 40,000 agent outlets. Registration and deposits are free and pricing for most other transactions is based on a tiered structure to allow even the lowest-income users to use the system. Transaction values are typically small, ranging from US$5 to US$30.

Funded through a government innovation agency and a successful crowdsourcing campaign, the start-up has also won several awards and grants, including best start-up in 2014's Global Innovation through Science & Technology competition.Last year, it was chosen by the International Red Cross as a provider for its Fire Sensors initiative, a project that has distributed 900 of the devices along with extensive market research.Julie Arrighi, Innovation Advisor at the American Red Cross, said that using networked heat sensors like Lumkani is crucial to mitigating the growing risk of slum fires around the world.

Got paid through PayPal? That's great, now you can easily withdraw the funds to your M-PESA, and use them any way you like. Need to pay your bills? No problem - your latest PayPal payment can be waiting for you on your M-PESA. Yeah, it's that easy. Why limit your shopping experience? It's now easier for you to top up your PayPal account, and shop around the world. Just transfer your M-PESA balance to your PayPal account, and get ready to shop almost anywhere, anytime.

By using virtual cards and wallets for online payments, you can: • Meet customer expectations by delivering an innovative product that they need • Encourage immediate card use to drive the profitability of your programme • Enhance the customer and user experience through convenient features • Strengthen your brand amongst your customers

The government regulates Ethiopia’s telecommunications market, meaning that there is only one telecom provider and others are not allowed. Both BelCash and M-birr are strictly technology providers. M-Birr General Manager Thierry Artaud sees the regulated market as a benefit.

Dutch company BelCash is focused on mobile banking, working in partnership with banks to provide easier access to finance through bank accounts. Ireland-based M-Birr is a mobile money service that works with micro finance institutions where no registration at a bank is needed.

Applications were submitted by companies across the region. The 10 finalists include: Artis Technologies, LLC – modern financing made simple through an embedded financial services platform for digital lending and real-time payments EnrichHER – offers funders the best selection of vetted investment opportunities in companies that have women in leadership roles, while cultivating a thriving ecosystem of New Majority businesses Ethiopay – safe and convenient way to pay loved ones’ bills from anywhere in the world Finosec – IT and cybersecurity management platform for the banking industry Griffin Technologies – customer intelligence platform that provides banks modern day context on new and existing customers Immediate – helps businesses recruit, engage, and retain employees by providing a financial wellness solution that delivers on-demand access to earned pay InvestGuard – technology-enabled exchange for independent PE sponsors Lendsmart AI – AI-enabled technology platform transforming the homebuying process Ryze – Bitcoin-first financial institution, starting with the most powerful way to save and accumulate Bitcoin VIVA Finance – improving employees’ financial well-being through an affordable lending program and financial education

At the conclusion of the program, the startups will present to a panel of investors during Fintech South’s Investor Preview event on Monday, Oct. 5. The top three companies will hit the virtual conference’s main stage for a chance to win $25,000.

“We are excited to partner with Visa, a leader in payments globally, as they are constantly building world-class solutions for consumers and businesses. Our goals are well-aligned. As we scale our wallet across emerging markets such as Nigeria, Mexico and Ethiopia, partnering with Visa to give both consumers and businesses, who have been underserved, access to Visa’s global network made sense to us,” the company said in a press release.

“The lack of an access to a structured market results in smallholder farmers being forced to sell to middlemen who buy at ridiculously exploitative prices,” writes the team at AgroCenta, a mobile marketplace for Ghanaian farmers, on its website. Ghanaian farmers don’t have access to buyers in faraway cities, or access to truckers who can transport their goods to a central market. The middlemen provide a service, but it hardly benefits the farmers at all. The middlemen have all the power, and with a largely illiterate population of farmers, all the leverage. AgroCenta, founded by two former employees of Esoko, a financial assistance app, is a sort of Swiss Army knife of tools to help address those issues. It’s not cutting out the middlemen, not yet, but it places some more power in the hands of farmers, with the goal of increasing that power. Within that knife are four platforms: AgroTrade, AgroPay, Truckr, and AgroInfo.

A Dutch company technology company developed an application that enables buyers to order, pay and receive a shipment. Belcash Technology Solutions Plc launched the e-commerce platform, HelloMarket shipments, with an estimated investment of one million dollars. The application, which was designed with the major aim of allowing local suppliers and manufacturers to promote and sell their products, will provide leather products, crafts, traditional clothing, souvenirs, homemade seasonings and other similar items manufactured by small and medium-sized enterprises. The e-commerce platform, integrated with Hellocash, a mobile and agent banking app for the purpose of making electronic payments, has a delivery system in place through Belcash agents around the country.

Belcash successfully piloted the app for three months and officially launched it in July 2019. It has supplied 200 tablets to its agents. Thus far, 50 small and medium enterprises have signed up and placed their products on the HelloMarket platform.

Belcash successfully piloted the app for three months and officially launched it in July 2019. It has supplied 200 tablets to its agents. Thus far, 50 small and medium enterprises have signed up and placed their products on the HelloMarket platform.

Automated financial advising (robo-advising) has become an established practice in wealth management, yet very few studies have looked at the cross-section of the robo-advisors and the factors explaining the persistent variability in their portfolio allocation recommendations. Using a sample of 53 advising platforms from the US and Germany, we show that the underlying algorithms manage to identify different risk profiles, although substantial variability is evident even within the same investor types' groups. The robo-advisor expertise in a particular asset class seems to play a significant role, as does the geographical location, while the breadth of the offered investment choice (number of portfolios) across the robo-advisors under study does not seem to have an effect.

The policies or “smart contracts” currently under development are based on blockchain, the distributed ledger technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. This avoids the need for paperwork and means payouts can be triggered automatically when certain conditions are met, such as a specific number of days of drought. The system uses high-resolution satellite images to detect rainfall and plant growth data.Conventional crop insurance is too expensive for more than 500m small farmers worldwide, says Christopher Sheehan, founder and chief executive of US-based WorldCover, which developed the system. “But with machine learning and blockchain technology, we can process these data very cheaply to produce a really simple crop insurance product with premiums of $20 to $50 for a farmer who might only be earning $3,000 a year.” Payments can be made using mobile money transfer services such as M-Pesa.

In order for your patients to make payments using SnapScan they will need to download the free SnapScan App (if they have not already done so).  The SnapScan App is available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry smartphones.  Note that, because the SnapScan user's credit card details are loaded and encrypted onto their phone, it is not necessary for them to actually carry their credit card.  This makes it impossible to lose or skim the credit card, thereby increasing the level of security.

It is possible for your patients to effect payment using QR codes that were not generated by Panacea.  For example, when you register as a merchant they will send you a "generic" QR code that contains your SnapCode (merchant ID) but does not contain any tracking info or a payment amount.  If one of these "generic" QR codes is used Panacea will not be able to generate the payment and allocations automatically, but you will be notified of the payment via Panacea in the normal way .

AgroCenta focuses on 3 key impact goals for Ghana:No Poverty: we are definitely improving the financial livelihood of smallholder farmers through fair trade. Many smallholder farmers are paid less than $1 a day and our objective is to increase it to $4 a day by 2020.Gender Equality: in Sub-Saharan Africa, traditions and land ownerships do not favor women, which ends up in many women being excluded from the agriculture value chain. By engaging the relevant stakeholders, AgroCenta rents arable agricultural lands to female smallholder farmers for free. Women are also given seeds, fertilizers, mechanized tractor services and extensive advisory information on farming best practices such as what type of seed to plant, when to plant, how to plant, etc.Decent Work & Economic Growth: we empower smallholder farmers to see agriculture as more than just a way to survive and position it as a viable industry that can be sustainable for their family.