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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.

Since the launch of CoFoundersLab, one of the largest networks for entrepreneurs, we have seen many small businesses and entrepreneurs flourish and benefit from the aid of this industry. However, being successful in startup fundraising via crowdfunding is not as easy as it seems. It comes with a lot of effort and dedication, but if one puts in the necessary work, they can realize fortunes that go far beyond just the raising of money.

Kiva expands access to and lowers the cost of capital for small business owners by providing 0% interest, crowdfunded loans, raised from its network of 1.6 million supportive lenders around the world. Many of these lenders become borrowers' new customers, brand advocates, and biggest fans.

WE NYC has partnered with Kiva, a platform specializing in crowdfunded loans, to help more women entrepreneurs achieve crowdfunding success. Participating in WE Fund Crowd means WE NYC will be your first lender, pledging 10%, or up to $1,000, of your crowdfunding goal. Friends, family, and new supporters who see your campaign will know that WE NYC believes in your business and your dreams.

A whole range of companies within the banking and FinTech industries are starting to explore ways through which they can take advantage of the electronic ledger technology that powers cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin

A whole range of companies within the banking and FinTech industries are starting to explore ways through which they can take advantage of the electronic ledger technology that powers cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. This distributed system stores data chronologically in segments known as “blocks” which allow for the information to be processed and transferred almost instantaneously. Among the benefits of the blockchain technology, that make it so attractive to FinTech companies and other large institutions, is the lowered risk of fraud since the technology is notoriously difficult to hack, its speed and the fact that it eliminates intermediary steps between parties in a transaction.

Unique challenges are mainly regulations for Fintech companies usually being a grey area, without enough clarity on what exactly they might fall under.With lack of enough funds and diversity, fundraising is also another challenge for most of the startups in the MENA region.

Tackling these challenges, the EFSE Fund and the SANAD Fund for MSME, advised by Finance in Motion, have partnered with Village Capital and the LHoFT to develop the Fincluders Bootcamp 2017, unique investment readiness program designed for entrepreneurs offering inclusive financial products.

‘Financial Inclusion’ might be the most noble sector of financial technology, solving problems the traditional finance industry won’t — servicing underbanked demographics in areas with poor financial infrastructure.

To encourage innovation, many industries such as healthcare and life science have started using the latest technologies for optimizing their business processes, cost cutting, and so on. Since there are lots of opportunities among various industries, the Fintech industries will get cost-effective processes and fewer regulations in the traditional financial sectors.

The country has seen skyrocketing mobile penetration rates, with subscriptions surpassing the total population amount by 12%, and FinTech innovations have followed. For example, the telecommunications giant Safaricom, which contributes 5% of the county’s GDP, led the push in 2007 with its M-Pesa money transfer service, which functions much like a limited mobile bank but without the need for an Internet connection. M-Pesa combines Safaricom’s mobile infrastructure with an agent model; Safaricom stores their balance and customers can go to one of 110,000 agents throughout the country to conduct transactions in person. The whole system runs on technology similar to text messaging, and has expanded to seven countries.

We want to acceleratefinancial inclusion BezoMoney is not just a product. It is a growth experience. Our vision is to become Africa’s largest community-based digital financial institution by empowering people financially through their way of life to facilitate upward social mobility using digital financial technologies. We are community, we are a financial ecosystem and we exist to address all your financial needs.

We had the opportunity to be trained by Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) which allowed us to develop our skills and our product as well as secure seed funding for BezoMoney.

They use advanced data science and machine learning to create the fastest and leanest financial services infrastructure, according to Joel Muhumuza, the country manager JUMO Uganda.

tions (number years to reach 80% coverage) 5 One of the reasons mobile phone technology has spread quickly is that it has followed other technologies that may have eased the way. Figure 2 confirms this sequencing property is likely at work, at least in the US: many of the new technologies that were introduced before about 1950 (with the exception of radio) were relatively slow to diffuse through the population, whereas those introduced in the second half of the century saw generally steeper adoption rates. Nonetheless, the speed of adoption of cell‐phones, especially in the developing world, remains unprecedented. Figure 2: Technology adoption is getting faster 6 5 Data from World Bank. 6 Source: New York Times, February 10, 2008. 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 Railw

We provide both local and international investors with the tools they need to understand and invest in Kenya's financial markets. Via web and mobile apps, we provide news aggregated from different publishers and fed through sorting and analysis artificial intelligence, real time data from the the securities exchange, charting and analysis tools and order placement for shares currently, but will carry bonds, derivatives and investment funds as well. We have partnered with local banks and stock brokers to leverage their back-end infrastructure and for provision of liquidity.

WorldCover uses technology to help commercial growers and agribusinesses reduce climate risk. Our featured product CropAssure is tailored to help almond growers protect against weather risk from frost and excess rain events.

Pula uses insurance and digital products to help smallholder farmers endure climate risks, improve their farming practices, and bolster their incomes over time. LEARN MORE

Artificial intelligence technologies are permeating financial services sectors around the world. The application of these technologies in emerging markets allows financial service providers to further automate their business processes and to leverage new and big data sources to overcome obstacles, including the high cost of serving rural and low-income customers and establishing customer identity and creditworthiness, that prevent the delivery of financial services to many consumers.