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Kiva started as a pioneer in crowdfunding in 2005, and is constantly innovating to meet people’s diverse lending needs. Whether it’s reinventing microfinance with more flexible terms, supporting community-wide projects or lowering costs to borrowers, we are always testing and learning.

We envision a financially inclusive world where all people hold the power to improve their lives.

Your M-PESA PIN is used to protect the money in your M-PESA account. You have to key in your PIN before you can perform any M-PESA transactions, so choose a PIN that you can easily remember. Use a PIN that is not easy for other people to guess, and do not share your PIN with anyone, not even Safaricom staff. You can change your PIN at any time by going to ‘My account’ on the M-PESA phone menu. 

The M-PESA cash merchants are recruited by Safaricom after a due diligence process and put under specific training. They are regularly monitored and re-trained, and Safaricom aims to visit them on-site every two weeks. The same process is applied to all cash merchants so that any customer anywhere in Kenya has the same experience at any cash merchant.

The funds are deposited in several commercial banks, which are prudentially regulated in Kenya. In addition, the funds are held by a Trust and are therefore out of reach from Safaricom, which cannot access or use them. In the unfortunate event of Safaricom going bankrupt, the creditors of Safaricom would not have access to the M-PESA funds. This is a requirement from the Central Bank of Kenya which oversees M-PESA. The funds remain at all times the property of M-PESA users.

Customers who sign up for the M-Pesa service can convert between e-cash and real cash (these are called cash-in / cash-out transactions), and can transfer e-cash from their account to that of another account holder via SMS. Cash-in / cash-out operations take place at one of many designated M-Pesa retail outlets, also known as “agents”. These agents are not employed by Safaricom, but are simply retailers / regular businessmen and women that are ‘authorized’ to trade e-cash for real cash.

Although some of M-Pesa’s initial success could be attributed to a uniquely favorable context for mobile-payments (strong customer need, welcoming regulatory environment, support from banks, strong brand awareness of Safaricom), its rapid and sustained growth was only possible due to a thoughtful operating model design, particularly regarding M-Pesa’s “agent network.”

Revenue from transaction fees that Safaricom collects via the agent during cash withdrawal operations and transfer operations (depositing money into mobile wallet is free). Reduce Safaricom customers’ churn, improve engagement, lifetime value etc.

strategy development process, especially when the various units and individuals in the network must collectively execute that strategy. The key issue is this: balancing act between collaborating and competing is delicate and crucial” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004, p. 197).If co-creation is fundamental to the industry, this needs to leverage on a wider customer perspective that requires introducing the idea of developing ecosystems where the customer is truly free to move and choose the best deal in more competitive markets able to let consumers' ability to make informed decisions against any possible market concentrations among market providers.A business ecosystem (Moore, 1996) reflects the new paradigm of competition in a better way. Traditional management models aimed at gaining competitive advantage, such as vertical or horizontal integration, economies of scale and scope, are not effective anymore. The value of today's companies is determined by the size of its ecosystem (Tewari, 2014). Business ecosystems consist in crossovers of a variety of industries, of which companies cooperate and embrace open innovation to satisfy new customers' needs an

evaluation, others were quite lucky and suffered less.There are many and different feelings on the way FinTechs will exit this situation, which as far as we understand has overall accelerated some strategic choices.First of all, there are many and different FinTechs in the market. What is critical is to look at the fundamentals of the business. All of them are about answering what society is going to look like in the future (attitudes, behaviors, habits, etc.), so that if we no longer need to go to retail stores anymore, why do we need some services based on this situation? This, again, underlines that banking is a people business (Omarini, 2015) and this requires a business to be resilient to become adaptive to consumer changes or moves into a different market where you can still apply the service because the society is not yet ready to shift somewhere else, which means the same business in different markets. Just think of the ongoing situation where the recent wave of people is rethinking and restructuring their finances, so that they have decided to switch rates to digital banks. In this scenario, the winners are those that have enough liquidity—or better still cash-rich—to buy good technology and invest in new directions, also taking the opportunity to use the pandemic to its advantage. This is especially true for payments that are going to be increasingly contactless. However, some more les

sons can be learnt from difficult times especially due to external factors such as the following:- People costs and per-customer contribution margin are key factors, and valuable indicators. They are valuable for incumbents too. When staff costs rise, then this becomes a burden if growth is not going to move on. Then, if we move on the per-customer contribution margin (revenue, minus variable costs including credit losses), then this makes a FinTech earn more money per bank account than the cost of running those bank accounts.- One more point has to do with the way a FinTech makes its revenues per customer, and net income is the figure to look out for here. This means that the more sources of revenues a company holds, the better it is for it. If we think of some of the best-known FinTechs, they gather their net income from interchange fees, ATM withdrawals, which can diminish during the pandemic, but gathering revenues from other sources such as lending, investing, or again from referring customers to third-party services, and earning commissions from these referrals.Under this oncoming market structure configuration, a focus on control and ownership of resources is giving way to the importance of accessing and leveraging resources through unique ways of collaboration. “The co-creation process also challenges the assumption that only the firm's aspirations matter. (…) Every participant in the experience network collaborates in value creation and competes in value extraction. This result in constant tension in the

One more point has to do with the way a FinTech makes its revenues per customer, and net income is the figure to look out for here. This means that the more sources of revenues a company holds, the better it is for it. If we think of some of the best-known FinTechs, they gather their net income from interchange fees, ATM withdrawals, which can diminish during the pandemic, but gathering revenues from other sources such as lending, investing, or again from referring customers to third-party services, and earning commissions from these referrals.

The emergence of new technologies and players, along with a favorable regulatory framework (PSD2 Directive), is changing the banking industry. FinTechs and TechFins have allowed the introduction of new services and changed the way customers interact to satisfy their financial needs. The FinTech landscape is constantly evolving in the market. Different business value propositions are entering the financial services industry, moving from increasing the user's experience to developing a time to market framework for banks to innovate products, processes, and channels, increasing the cost efficiency and looking for a “partnering on order” to lighten the regulatory burdens for banks. The many businesses of banks are changing their value chains, and banks' business models should do the same accordingly. Strategists could no longer take their value chains as a given; choices have to be made on what needs to be protected and maintained, what abandoned and the new on coming to make banks evolve and become more resilient in doing their job. Banking is shifting significantly from a pipeline, vertical paradigm, to open banking business models where open innovation, modularity, and ecosystem-based bank's business model may become the ongoing mainstream and paradigm to follow and develop. Opportunities and threats for banks are many and new ones to re-gaining their role in the market throughout a re-intermediation process.

They have brought to the traditional banking industry a wave of competition and broken pipeline value chains, unbundling them into different modules of products or services, which may be combined among themselves. These companies on the one hand and the BigTechs (Google, Facebook, Apple, Samsung, Alibaba, etc.) on the other have been forcing the industry to change, transform, and evolve in a set of new financial intermediation directions. Use of data and customer experience are both FinTechs' major assets and threats as well. On the one hand, they please the customers as individuals and introduce the paradigm of contextual banking. On the other, the two selling points are threatening both the incumbent players and regulators in different ways. For banks, it is even more urgent to react actively because their “no fee zone” is expanding, due to new regulations from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus (CFPB) and similar entities in different countries.

Evolving checkout processes are one of the fastest growing trends in the retail space, as users are demanding better and more flexible shopping experiences and payment processes. Because of this, cashless payments and omnichannel options are becoming the norm, putting forward the business case for mobile payments, as they provide customers with a consistent experience. In fact, retailers that are reconfiguring their systems to accommodate increasing mobile customers – who expect multichannel options which support quick and secure digital payments – are more likely to see a boost in sales and growth.

SnapScan offers quick, easy, and secure mobile payment solutions to retailers so their customers can enjoy the convenience of paying on the fly.

Evolving checkout processes are one of the fastest growing trends in the retail space, as users are demanding better and more flexible shopping experiences and payment processes.

Today every industry, but especially the retail industry, is experiencing pressure to implement digital solutions in order to remain competitive.

Evolving checkout processes are one of the fastest growing trends in the retail space, as users are demanding better and more flexible shopping experiences and payment processes.

To use SnapScan, consumers download the app for Apple, Android or BlackBerry, and add their credit card details by taking a picture of their card and creating a Pin. They can then use the app to scan a QR (quick response) code — a type of barcode — in a store and can make payments.

SnapScan works with debit cards and credit cards, and there are no sign-up, setup or installation fees. There is also no monthly fee payable.

SnapScan falls under FireID, the company that now houses six start-up technology businesses, SnapScan being the most recently launched. FireID started life as an information security company specialising in “two-factor authentication” technology for mobile phones. It was funded by billionaire Johann Rupert, through Reinet. Justin Stanford, one of FireID’s co-founders, was instrumental in securing the initial capital injection. However, Stanford was unable to convince Reinet’s investment committee to continue investing and in 2011 it pulled its funding of FireID, forcing the company to lay off its 40 employees.

Johannesburg - South African financial services provider Standard Bank has acquired a majority share of Firepay, the company behind the quick response code payment app SnapScan.

Firepay launched the SnapScan app in partnership with Standard Bank in 2014 and today has 32 000 physical and online merchants.The app, which is connected to a bank account or mobile wallet, allows users to make payments from their mobile device by scanning a QR (quick response) code.

“We are excited about working more closely with the Firepay team and think that there is an excellent strategic fit between their capabilities and Standard Bank’s vision for a truly universal bank, both in South Africa and throughout the African continent,” said Wendy Pienaar, SBSA Head of Emerging Payments.

JUMO, a technology company building next-generation financial services for emerging market entrepreneurs, is celebrating connecting over 15 million people to credit and savings in their six markets in Africa and Asia today.

Founded in London in 2015, JUMO has partnered with financial service providers and mobile network operators to provide credit and savings solutions in Pakistan, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Zambia.

Andrew Watkins-Ball, Founder & Group CEO, said this milestone demonstrates JUMO’s unique ability to reach underserved entrepreneurs – over 60% of JUMO’s customers are micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs).

“We are working to connect every entrepreneur to the financial products they need to grow and prosper,” says Watkins-Ball. “Our technology enables our partner banks and payments companies to help millions of underserved people access financial services.”