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Bosire and Kimani launched FarmDrive in May 2015. The digital recordkeeping platform serves as a basis for bankers to establish credit ratings and determine which farmers are best suited for small loans. FarmDrive’s pilot program consisted of 50 farmers. Today hundreds of thousands are in FarmDrive’s database; about 830 have received financing. In turn the banks pay FarmDrive for essentially functioning as their credit bureau for Kenya’s vast farming community. The two entrepreneurs have no intention of stopping there. “There are more than five million small farmers in Kenya,” Bosire says. “Throughout Africa it’s about 50 million. But when we started FarmDrive, we always had global ambitions. We’re building solutions for farmers in Asia too.”

SnapScan users can not pay using the app at FNB Speedpoints, said SnapScan CEO Chris Zietsman."The SnapScan app can scan and pay some non-SnapScan generated QR codes. Before these are enabled, we carefully assess the security, user experience and tech stability of these solutions based on specific criteria to ensure the seamless experience our customers have come to appreciate. "Although SnapScan app users cannot currently scan FNB Speedpoint devices, they can already pay at a wide range of Masterpass enabled businesses such as Engen convenience stores, Payfast ecommerce merchants, and Takealot."SnapScan will be adding to that list in coming months, Zietsman said.

The authors propose a new regime of regulatory systems in response to the growth of financial technology to balance innovation with objectives for economic development, financial stability, and consumer protection. This regime, called "smart regulation," requires a comprehensive review of current regulatory frameworks and systems. Smart regulation also involves technology for regulation, includes digitization of systems, and leverages advanced analytics and data.

The Electoral Commission of Ghana has officially declared Nana Akufo-Addo as the winner of the 2020 presidential elections. Akufo-Addo has been reelected for a second term with 51. 59% of votes, beating out former president John Mahama of the NDC.

Farmers in emerging markets face challenges with low productivity. Due to the risks they face from ongoing climate change, pests and diseases, farmers struggle to find financial stability. Pula is at the center of an ecosystem that helps them manage their risks with insurance and digital solutions.

So far JUMO has analysed more than 33 terabytes of data to serve more than nine million customers in seven countries across Africa and Asia, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Pakistan.

Its mission is to build and operate inclusive digital banking marketplaces to advance financial inclusion for the 80 per cent of the world’s population who are excluded or underserved by traditional financial services.

As an investor partner, LeapFrog’s financial services expertise is being used for product design and multi-country rollouts, to turbocharge Jumo’s growth and spur financial inclusion across Africa.

By eliminating exploitative buying from the value chain, smallholder farmers are able to become financially independent, get enough money to take care of their families and needs thereby alleviating them from poverty

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.