Each day, Fawry processes 2 million financial transactions, giving Egyptians an easy, secure payment alternative to the complex, time-consuming procedures that are the norm. To help grow customer satisfaction and speed the roll-out of new services, Fawry deployed IBM® Storage, IBM Db2® and Oracle database on IBM Power Systems™ solutions.

An Egyptian digital payments firm has quadrupled in value during the pandemic, helped by a government push to reduce citizens’ heavy reliance on cash. Investors and analysts are split on whether the stock rally has further legs.

Fawry plans to list 36% of its share capital, worth up to 1.6 billion Egyptian pounds ($97 million), in the flotation.It said Actis, Banque Misr and National Bank of Egypt would each be offered about 7% of the stock, and 5% would be offered to retail investors.A private placing representing the remaining 10% of the share capital was 15.9 times oversubscribed, raising about 360 million Egyptian pounds, investment bank EFG Hermes said last Thursday.

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 advances financial inclusion solutions in seven countries. Karri Payments offers mobile payment collection for schools and community organisations.

During the Global SME Finance Forum 2018, Jumo's Martin Vogdt, Chief Product Officer, demoed the company's services at the TechPitch on November 6.  Jumo is an alternative lender in Africa and Asia providing nano loans to consumers and MSMEs through mobile money rails. The Forum's TechPitch provided an opportunity for 13 innovative fintechs to demo their product to global and emerging market investment firms, financial institutions and other Forum participants. This exclusive opportunity is one of the key features of the conference and is open to a limited number of financial technology innovators working in the SME space.

The HiPipo chief executive officer Innocent Kawooya expressed his excitement about JUMO’s financial inclusion efforts, saying that its products are taking a lead in democratising lending and borrowing.“We are excited to interact with JUMO, a company that is enhancing financial inclusion in over 10 countries and serving more than 16 million customers.”

JUMO also has a mobile wallet technology that offers an easy-to-use service that is accessible via mobile devices.Watkins-Ball commented on the cost-effective technology used to collect information which strengthened the business model, He said: “When we founded JUMO, we were always clear that we can only achieve our mission by leveraging sophisticated information technologies at really low cost.

In January, Flutterwave announced a takedown of US$35 million to boost its expansion into sub-Saharan Francophone markets and North Africa. A month later, Jumo pushed its cumulative fundraising since 2015 to nearly US$150 million with a successful plea for cash to back its initiatives in Côte D’Ivoire, Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent.

UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is pleased to announce that JUMO has won their Sprint4Women Design Competition for women’s financial inclusion in Zambia. JUMO was one of three finalists competing for a grant to roll-out digital financial services (DFS) solutions for the rural women of Zambia, alongside Fenix Zambia and Hobbiton Investments.

South African fintech startup Jumo closed a $55 million round from a diverse group of investors, the company confirmed.

The company has raised nearly $146 million since its creation from renowned players such as Google, which integrated Jumo into its accelerator in May 2017, the Mastercard foundation, development institutions such as Finnfund and Proparco (the private branch of the French Development Agency).

JUMO is a transaction and predictive technology platform that partners with mobile network operators and banks to offer customers microloans and access to savings and insurance products. They are currently active in six markets – Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Pakistan – with plans to soon launch in India, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. JUMO has helped disburse over $1.6 billion in funding to small and micro enterprises, and has helped connect over 15 million people to credit and savings services.

The crowdfunding industry has emerged in the past few years as one of the most promising alternative financing options. Lending and donating operations accounted for 81% of the crowdfunding industry's $34.4 billion total funding volume in 2015. Kiva Zip, a prosocial program, created an online platform that provides 0% interest peer-to-peer loans and has features in common with lending and donating crowdfunding platforms.

The downloadable Branch app analyzes social and financial data on a borrower’s phone to determine creditworthiness before providing up to $20. Those with a “digital identity” too limited to establish credit standing can start off borrowing smaller amounts and climb a “trust ladder” to larger loans by timely repayment. Kiva.org, launched in 2005, facilitates more than a million dollars a week in small loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries by matching them with microlenders.

And finally in Kiva's defense, its behavior is emblematic of fund-raising in microfinance and charity generally, and is ultimately traceable to human foibles. People donate in part because it makes them feel good. Giving the beneficiary a face and constructing a story for her in which the donor helps write the next chapter opens purses. The pleasure of giving

So the service seemed like a win-win-win, and to an outside observer, its dual operations in the United States and Kenya appeared to be progressing smoothly. Kiva Zip’s senior director, Jonny Price, sounded upbeat when he wrote on NextBillion in April, “We’re excited by (Zip’s) potential to revolutionize the way that small business owners in America, and the wider world, are able to access microcredit.” Meanwhile, over the past four years, the platform enabled more than 8,000 lenders to make almost 10,000 microloans totalling a reported $1.8 million to more than 6,500 borrowers in Kenya alone.

We briefly examine some literature that challenges the received view on the overall value of microfinance and consider some implications for Kiva and conclude by noting that in the current market, Kiva will need to draw on its corporate history of innovation if it hopes to maintain its position of leadership in the face of new organizations like Acumen Fund and One Acre Fund that take different routes to the same goal of reducing poverty.

Kiva Small Business Loan FeaturesSome attractive aspects of a Kiva loan includes more flexible terms, low costs to borrowers and emphasis on supporting community-wide projects that can shape the future for a family or an entire community.

Once in East Africa, Flannery and Jackley agreed that they too would facilitate loans rather than donations. After weeks of brainstorming, they soon settled on the basic idea for Kiva. At first, they envisioned a few friends and family members lending money to a handful of entrepreneurs in East Africa. And then eventually, although they weren’t sure of the steps along the way, they saw Kiva evolving into a self-regulating online lending marketplace where microfinance institutions (MFIs) could raise loan capital to fund projects for small-business people in developing countries.