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the MFSA published a Consultation Document proposing to (i) launch a FinTech Regulatory Sandbox, (ii) set up a framework for the regulatory certification of RegTech solutions, while also encouraging persons developing SupTech solutions to approach the Authority through a dedicated online form, and (iii) provide a status update on the other strategic objectives presented under Pillar 1 of the FinTech Strategy

MFSA FinTech Strategy Overview The MFSA aims to establish the foundations to enable FinTech start-ups and  scale-ups, technology firms and established financial services providers to develop viable FinTech solutions which drive innovation and enhance access to financial products, increase competition whilst promoting market integrity, deliver better customer experiences, and ultimately, contribute to the long- term success of the Maltese financial services sector.

The MFSA FinTech Strategy proposes to set out six pillars for the MFSA to create a holistic long-term approach to catalyse innovation, growth and competition in the financial services sector, whilst ensuring robust investor protection, market integrity and financial soundness.

The company will continue to develop and expand its offering to provide a range of product development and payments services.Kobus Ehlers, Firepay CEO, said: “Our team is looking forward to building out our payments platform to solve the real-world payments problems we have always focused on, and to provide customers with the best experience possible. We’re excited to work with Standard Bank in our mission to achieve this both in South Africa and across the continent.”

“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.“Firepay’s experienced team and industry know-how will be used to bolster Standard Bank’s emerging payments strategy,” she added.In addition to SnapScan, the Firepay team’s technology platform already enables payments for several clients, including WeChat and Masterpass.

“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.“Firepay’s experienced team and industry know-how will be used to bolster Standard Bank’s emerging payments strategy,” she added.In addition to SnapScan, the Firepay team’s technology platform already enables payments for several clients, including WeChat and Masterpass.

Fawry For Banking Technology And Electronic Payment is engaged in providing electronic payment services in Egypt. It offers ways to pay bills and other services in multiple channels like online, using ATMs, mobile wallets and retail points. The firm's network of retailers includes small groceries, pharmacies, stationary, and post-offices among others.

Over the last four years, our service has allowed the Ethiopian population to access the following services using their mobile phones:Health advice (HelloDoctor)Market access (HelloMarket / HelloGebeya)Labour market access (HelloJobs / HelloSera)Legal advice (HelloLawyer / HelloTebeka)Mobile Trade service (HelloBroker/ HelloDelela)And, since February 2015, in partnership with select Ethiopian banks and micro finance institutions;

The fintech industry is lagging behind in cloud adoption. The industry as a whole was cautious about moving information to the cloud due to security concerns. However, the adoption of cloud technology is accelerating.Public cloud adoption has many benefits for financial businesses. The cloud provides a faster way to deliver services to consumers. Companies have to invest less capital.It streamlines operations and helps build consumer-centric processes. According to a PWC report, the public cloud will be the main infrastructure model for financial services by 2020.

ezoMoney provides a digital solution to informal savings schemes, allowing savings groups and individuals via their digital savings platform. BezoMoney has a wallet for each of the individuals who save with them. The digital savings platform provides access to loans and helps those saving with them create a comprehensive savings history to ensure transparency.  Bezo Money also provides investments, investment payment options, insurance, group purchase, and pensions services.

Undoubtedly, Ghana’s drive towards a cashless economy cannot be achieved without Financial Technology — FinTech. We’ve been pushed to an era where most people use mobile money services in the country, and have seen the birth of FinTech companies who render financial services and also provide foreign remittance services from countries across the world.

AgroCenta's innovation focuses on the post harvest value chain. The suite of services within AgroCenta provides an end-to-end solution that ensures that it provides a win-win situation for the smallholder farmer and all active players in the value chain. If a smallholder farmer wants to know the latest market price of maize in the nearest market to enable him price competitively, he uses AgroInfo to request for information via SMS and Voice solutions. After the farmers has made a decision on how much to sell, the farmer's commodity information are uploaded onto the AgroTrade platform to connect him to buyers. When a trade agreement is reached between the farmer and a buyer, the farmer requests for TruckR, which is the truck delivery service component of AgroCenta, in real time using mobile phone. After the commodities are sold to the buyer, the farmer is paid via the AgroPay solution, which is the financial inclusion platform within AgroCenta

AgroCenta targets about 10 million smallholder farmers in Sub Saharan Africa within the next 5 years to help them trade fairly. Over 90% of these smallholder farmers live under $1 and are not able to make enough money from sales proceed to take care of their families and re-invest a percentage of the money raised back into their farms.

AgroCenta's value proposition lies in the advantage of providing the last mile market access for smallholder farmers in the staple food value chain through extensive collaboration with many partners who play an active role in the value chain.

We do this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world. Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care.

We do this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world. Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care.

We do this by crowdfunding loans and unlocking capital for the underserved, improving the quality and cost of financial services, and addressing the underlying barriers to financial access around the world. Through Kiva's work, students can pay for tuition, women can start businesses, farmers are able to invest in equipment and families can afford needed emergency care.

AgroCenta brings the shareholders in Ghana’s agricultural value chain under one umbrella. Focusing on the producers, rural smallholder farmers, the company has developed a web and mobile platform that provides rural farmers with a suite of services to empower them to sell their crops at fair-market prices. AgroCenta’s platform, which is includes SMS functionality, provides the following services: 1) AgroInfo: real-time commodity pricing information; 2) TruckR: an on-demand logistics solution; 3) AgroTrade: a market platform to offer crops for sale; and 4) AgroPay: a mobile-money based payments service. The company markets its platform leveraging an intimate knowledge of the African cultural context and recruiting and technologically empowering village chiefs to act as advocates or agents for the platform.

Its latest service – Carbon Express – enables users to initiate and complete transactions such as P2P transfers and bill payments from the keyboard without launching the Carbon app or leaving the app they are using. Instead, they will be able to access services from the touch of their keyboard enabling quicker Instagram or WhatsApp commerce.

Though each Hello brand represents a different service, they all share one key feature - the mobile phone is the access point for their service.

Belcash is the proprietor and provider of the 'Hello' brand. We attempt to find the perfect fit for our customers and partners. This heavy focus on customer service, innovation and professionalism means that our stakeholders are proud to identify themselves with us

The chatbot will also enable 24/7 instant customer service for its customers across Africa and Europe. Daniel Howard, CTO for SimbaPay, says: “Another major objective we achieved with the chatbot service is that it also works without internet. This means customers with a mobile phone, even a basic phone without internet access, can access the SimbaPay chatbot using SMS.” Together with Interswitch, SimbaPay says its B2B division offers its instant remittance technology to banks and telcos who want to provide their customers with the service. To send money with an SMS users need the recipient’s phone number and the chatbot will automatically obtain the recipient bank account or mobile money details.

Innovate Finance is delighted to be supporting this strategic review of the UK FinTech sector. Over the last few months we have seen exponential growth and change in the adoption of digital financial services. We are at a pivotal moment with regards to our economy and now have a unique opportunity to reflect on the success of UK FinTech. We have the best in class in terms of innovation and should consider what more we can do to fully embed it within our wider financial services. We look forward to working with Ron Kalifa and stakeholders across the ecosystem to develop a shared blueprint for growth of the UK’s financial services sector that has technological innovation at its core

“Businesses, as well as Kenyans and expatriates with friends and family abroad, send over US$18 billion to other African countries, Asia and Europe annually with several billion Kenya Shillings going through the Simbapay network. Therefore, this service will offer Prime Bank’s customers a world-class fully digital international money transfer service,” added Karanja.

Prime Bank’s Director for Business Development, Vijay Kantaria, said the tier 2 lender has embarked on investment in technology through partnering with various FinTechs to accelerate its digital integration plan.

Through SimbaPay, Prime Bank customers will now be able to instantly and securely send money directly to bank accounts or mobile wallets across 15 countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia including India, United Kingdom, China (WeChat Pay), Germany, Uganda among others.

Commenting on the partnership, SimbaPay’s Head of Operations Victor Karanja noted that the service will provide a seamless platform for Prime Bank’s customer base to send money abroad at the click of a button.

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.

New technologies, like machine learning/artificial intelligence, predictive behavioral analytics, and data-driven marketing, will take the guesswork and habit out of financial decisions. "Learning" apps will not only learn the habits of users, often hidden to themselves, but will engage users in learning games to make their automatic, unconscious spending and saving decisions better. Fintech is also a keen adaptor of automated customer service technology, utilizing chatbots to and AI interfaces to assist customers with basic task and also keep down staffing costs. Fintech is also being leveraged to fight fraud by leveraging information about payment history to flag transactions that are outside the norm.

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.