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SnapScan has always relied on small, cross-functional teams to get things done. We believe that it delivers stronger results than those delivered by bigger teams. You will join a small, highly leveraged technical team that has buy-in and autonomy to solve problems using whatever tools and means are fit for purpose.

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.

SimbaPay is an award winning mobile app transforming the international remittance space. With a focus on extreme speed, convenience and constant innovation. Customers are able to send money to loved ones or even merchants, from wherever they are at any time of day or night. The company is headquartered in London and can be found online at www.SimbaPay.com SimbaPay is licensed and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

SimbaPay is an award winning mobile app transforming the international remittance space. With a focus on extreme speed, convenience and constant innovation.

Paga is a mobile payment company. We are building an ecosystem to enable people to digitally send and receive money, and creating simple financial access for everyone. Our mission is to make it simple for one billion people to access and use money. Our first market is Nigeria where Paga is the leading mobile payment company.

Paga is a mobile payment company. We are building an ecosystem to enable people to digitally send and receive money, and creating simple financial access for everyone. Our mission is to make it simple for one billion people to access and use money. Our first market is Nigeria where Paga is the leading mobile payment company.

The device detects fires by sensing for a rate of rise of temperature, rather than smoke, which would cause many false alarms. In the event of a fire, the detectors communicate to one another by means of radio frequency (RF) to create a community wide alert – the alert is transmitted to neighbouring detectors within a 60m radius of the fire, giving the community at large the necessary advanced warning to deal with the fire before it becomes unmanageable.

For years, Egyptian companies have been paying salaries in cash, and people have been saving money outside banks.  Only 10 percent of Egyptians have bank accounts, according to Payfort’s State of Payments in the Arab World 2014 report. Over the previous decade, the electronic payment market has been penetrated by two firms: state-owned e-Finance, which handles electronic payments from and to the government through banking channels, and private-sector Fawry, which was launched in 2008 to provide payment solutions through ATM machines, mobile wallets, and retail points. Chief technology officer of Fawry, Mostafa Elnahhas, told Wamda that his company succeeded in spreading 65,000 collection points in 300 cities for banked customers in Egypt. However, the electronic payment is still small-sized due to the large amount of unbanked customers and the low credit card penetration.

Regulations are, however, crippling entrepreneurs. Mourad Alashry, CEO of PayMe, launched his startup in August 2016. It  allows companies and businesses to collect electronic payment without signing contracts with banks or paying extra fees.  The startup offers a simple payment tool for companies to allow them to set up an account and have customers send money through it. PayMe app was forced by Egypt’s fiscal regulator to stop operating for four months to abide by regulations. (Photo via PayMe) However, shortly after its launch, the Central Bank of Egypt, the state regulator, suspended Payme’s operations as a payment firm as it wasn’t cooperating with a bank. The firm had to abide by this regulation until it followed the requirements and collaborated with state-owned bank the National Bank of Egypt, then resumed its business in January 2017.  

Regulations are, however, crippling entrepreneurs. Mourad Alashry, CEO of PayMe, launched his startup in August 2016. It  allows companies and businesses to collect electronic payment without signing contracts with banks or paying extra fees.  The startup offers a simple payment tool for companies to allow them to set up an account and have customers send money through it.

The rise of online banking around the world has helped other economies solve these very challenges. Cash, for example, is hard to transport. Coins and bills are prone to theft, and their use makes dodging taxes easier for those so inclined. For individuals who must pay in person, getting across a gridlocked city like Cairo is logistically difficult. Together, these problems can constrain an economy. In Egypt, where 94 percent of all transactions were cash as recently as 2014, such a system stymies economic growth.

Fawry is part of a new wave of technology companies ushering Egypt into the digital age. Many of these firms are helping transform industries like banking, health care, and transport, and in the process creating good jobs for young Egyptians, more than 30 percent of whom are unemployed.

Belcash’s CEO will describe the partnership and challenges he has faced in rolling out an agent network targeting pastoralist clients at the 2015 SEEP Opening Plenary: Private Sector Partnerships: Creating Sustained Impact

BelCash Technology Solutions PLC - a Mercy Corps partner and Ethiopia’s first mobile and agent banking technology platform to launch agent-based mobile money services in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

SnapScan is a mobile payments app, providing South Africans with the most convenient way to pay with their phones. The app was named MTN App of the Year in 2013, and now boasts a network of over 50 000 merchants nationwide, with one million app downloads to date. SnapScan is an easy, affordable and convenient way for merchants to accept payments; as well as a safe, secure and seamless payment option for users. SnapScan combines the agility and speed of a small local startup with the industry knowledge and experience of Standard Bank, Africas biggest bank. As a team, we love solving difficult problems, especially when it comes to making fast, easy mobile payments possible!SnapScan is a product of FireID Payments, part of the FireID group, a set of local startups building elegant solutions to a wide range of difficult and interesting problems.

SnapScan combines the agility and speed of a small local startup with the industry knowledge and experience of Standard Bank, Africas biggest bank. As a team, we love solving difficult problems, especially when it comes to making fast, easy mobile payments possible!SnapScan is a product of FireID Payments, part of the FireID group, a set of local startups building elegant solutions to a wide range of difficult and interesting problems.

SnapScan is a mobile payments app, providing South Africans with the most convenient way to pay with their phones.

We have seen improvements in farmers’ livelihoods because we give them a fair price for the commodities they produce and help them with better farming practices so they increase their yields. Seeing farmers being able to pay school fees for their families has given us joy about what we do. Agriculture is the space we should be in. Before AgroCenta farmers were selling to middle men at sometimes ridiculously low prices for maize, for instance. At the time a middle man would buy a 50 kg bag of maize for US$9 (40 cedis) and we would buy it for US$11 (49 cedis). We deal mostly in maize, sorghum and soya beans and have a five year contract with a big organisation that has a constant demand for these commodities. In 2016 we sponsored 400 farmers, the majority of whom were women. We provided them with seed, fertilisers and tractor services. These farmers had an assured market. Everything they produced got purchased by us at prevailing market prices, enabling them sell quickly and earning higher.

Since its inception, about 7.5 million customers have used the platform to either save or source credit. Of this number, about 75% are small business owners. All eyes will be watching to see what big deals come next this year for Jumo.

Jumo facilitates digital financial services such as credit and savings in emerging markets. The startup, founded in 2014 by Watkins-Ball is already active in seven African countries — South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, as well as in Pakistan and Singapore.

Last year, the Cape Town-based fintech startup became the first South African startup to be selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator. Since its inception in January 2015 to April 2017, the company has grown from just seven to 300 employees.

EthSwitch has an objective to work as international gateway for all banks. When the project is fully completed, over 50 e-Payment products and services will be supported in EthSwitch covering card delivery channels like ATM, POS, mobile, internet, and voice. EthioPay is the brand given to the National e-Payment Switch of Ethiopia.

Amongst the future activities is to include mobile as part of the financial inclusion policy. Another active area is the recent launch of the domestic card called EthioPay. Across a national population of 100 million, there are 2.5 million card holders and 40 million mobile users. Sufficient opportunity for Bekele and his team in the time to come.

Since May this year the number of inter-bank transactions has been growing. This is expected to increase as the Ethiopian population becomes aware of the interoperability and ease of use of using cards in any bank’s ATM machine. Along the way there have been some transactions declines due to connectivity failures and those limitations are being addressed

the popular mobile money transfer program, came to be in Kenya. It’s narrated by Michael Joseph, the managing director of mobile money at Vodafone and the program’s founder.

The animation was produced as part of a series of online courses designed and delivered by the USAID Mobile Solutions Team, QED, and TechChange, a DC-based organization that specializes in online training for international development.

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.”

In its next phase of algorithm development, FarmDrive seeks to expand the environmental arm of the algorithm by incorporating more alternative data-sets, including satellite imagery and remote sensing data. They are currently engaging with Planet, a satellite company from Silicone Valley, and The Impact Lab, a Chicago-based data analytics firm to analyze the possibilities of using satellite images in predicting a farmer’s creditworthiness.In addition, FarmDrive also plans to use these environmental data-sets, in combination with crop cycle data to predict seasonal yield and influence agricultural insurance products.The startup also uses machine learning in generating the farmer’s profile by learning from the farmer’s input. Data points about the farmer’s behaviour, education level, and their interaction with the app are all analyzed to contribute to the farmers profile score.

Smallholder farmers, especially in Kenya face difficulties when it comes to accessing loans and financing from banks and other financial institutions. The agricultural sector is the backbone to Kenya’s economy, yet banks have very little incentive to work with farmers.

FarmDrive founded in 2014 has built an innovative solution that provides “detailed risk profiles of smallholder farmers to financial institutions”. FarmDrive does this through a credit score, generated by an algorithm developed by the team, in-house. The algorithm relies on data-sets collected from the farmers through their mobile phones, alternative data and machine learning.