Spring 21 Capstone 640pm

FarmDrive has also partnered with the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) to build the capacity of Kenyan young farmers and stakeholders and help them access finance.

Farm Drive has a wide variety of partners including: investors (Engineers without Borders and Mercy Corps); capacity building (Open Capital advisors, ACRE Africa -to create insurance products); and financial institutions (Musoni Kenya).

FarmDrive catalyzes financial institutions to lend more to smallholder farmers by de-risking the process through clear and transparent records. Farmer clients of FarmDrive are benefiting from financial awareness, financial management tools, farming-related recommendations, access to finance and links to profitable markets.

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.

The startup aim to deliver productive digital loans and lay away savings products to smallholder farmers and EWB Canada said the investment will allow the startup to scale to $13 million of loan

EWB Canada’s acting director of investments Elena Haba said the startup has the potential to fill the credit gap between creditors and underserved small business owners like smallholder farmers.

FarmDrive’s Bosire said the startup intends to create shared value by increasing agriculture portfolios in Africa from its current four percent of total lending to 25% and onwards.Said Bosire: “We are going where banks haven’t reached and are creating a trust ecosystem in the most unstructured sector in sub Saharan Africa – Agriculture”.

CGAP and FarmDrive Announce Partnership for Satellite-Based Credit Assessments for Smallholder Farmers

Through CGAP’s financial contribution, FarmDrive will collaborate with The Impact Lab and Planet to use satellite images to better understand planting cycles, crop yields, and trends in production to help forecast future revenues, timing of income and potential gaps in payments.

FarmDrive Co-founder commented, “We are delighted by CGAP’s support. We created FarmDrive to revitalize agricultural production and improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The opportunity to incorporate world-class satellite technology and data analytics is a monumental step towards achieving these goals.”

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.”

Reimagining finance in emerging markets by extending financial services to the underserved and the excluded has been JUMO’s goal since inception. This explains why it chose to specialize in social impact financial products where small businesses that are financially excluded can access loans and savings products.

Reimagining finance in emerging markets by extending financial services to the underserved and the excluded has been JUMO’s goal since inception.

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.

Jumo is an alternative lender in Africa and Asia providing nano loans to consumers and MSMEs through mobile money rails.

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

The book begins with an overview of Cape Town facts such as culture (melting pot of local and international cultures), spoken languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa), travel destination (one of the top in the world), cuisine (exquisite), bars and cafes (excellent), customs (braai barbecue), nature and sports (fantastic), wildlife (diverse), locals (chatty, friendly), and transportation (great but fragmented),

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 facilitates digital financial services such as credit and savings in emerging markets. The startup, founded in 2014 by Watkins-Ball is already active in seven African countries — South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, as well as in Pakistan and Singapore.

Last year, the Cape Town-based fintech startup became the first South African startup to be selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator. Since its inception in January 2015 to April 2017, the company has grown from just seven to 300 employees.

Share246TweetShareWhatsAppEmail246 SharesCairo-based fintech Dayra has won $15,000 grant from Y Combinator’s Startup School, becoming the first startup from the Middle East & North Africa to win it. The winners, most of which were from the United States, were announced by Y Combinator on Friday. MENAbytes also understands that there are at least three startups from the region that have made it to Y Combinator’s current accelerator batch (Winter 2020) that YC will reveal at its demo day in March 2020 – good few months for MENA at YC.

Kiva covers operating costs primarily through the generosity of our lenders, who can choose to make donations in addition to loans. We cover more than two-thirds of our operating costs through these voluntary donations from Kiva lenders. The remainder of our costs are covered through grants, donations from foundations and supporters and Field Partner service fees. This model of fundraising helps promote sustainability, by keeping our fundraising costs low and tapping into the power of the crowd to help cover our costs.

Kiva User Funds LLC is a separate entity that holds all funds belonging to Kiva users in FDIC-insured, escrow-like bank accounts. These low-yielding FBO accounts were set up to ensure Kiva users’ funds (meant for lending) are protected and fully separated from Kiva’s operational funds.

100% of your loans go to the field Kiva never takes a fee from lenders, which means 100% of the funds you lend on Kiva go toward supporting borrowers’ loans.

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.

A 300% rally from a mid-March low has boosted its market value to 20 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.3 billion). That puts Fawry among the country’s 10 most valuable companies alongside firms such as Telecom Egypt Co. and Elswedy Electric Co., which generate many times more revenue and profit.

“Egypt needs fintech, specifically after the success story of Fawry, since our financial markets are not properly regulated at the level of payments and e-commerce – all of it is more informal, so any solutions would boom,” Sharara says.

MoneyFellows, an Egyptian startup incubated in London, marries technology with traditional money circles to help people save and borrow through their social networks. Like many other startups, MoneyFellows has to work with commercial banks because the Egyptian government has strict regulations about institutions that can look after customers’ deposits.

The digital transformation and e-payments company Fawry became the first listed tech company in Egypt with a market capitalisation of $1 billion last week. At the end of trading on 17 August, the market value of the company had jumped to LE15.56 billion (around $1 billion), meaning it is now rubbing shoulders with the likes of CIB (Egypt), QNB Al-Ahli, the Eastern Company, the Abu Qir Fertilisers Company, Telecom Egypt, and Al-Sewedy Electric in the EGX index billionaires’ club.

AIG Insurance Company has signed an agreement with Fawry, a digital payment platform.The partnership concerns the marketing of "Qershak el Abyad", an electronic policy managed by Fawry Insurance Brokerage.The product will thus be available through Fawry's network of 151 000 sales outlets and numerous distribution channels (banks, telephone operators, etc.) used by more than 30 million consumers.

Although Fawry, Egypt’s top e-payment platform and leading fintech, became Africa’s latest ‘unicorn’ this year via a listing on an African bourse, it will not be the last to emerge from the country’s burgeoning tech scene, according to the International Finance Corporation (IFC). “Egypt will produce further unicorns one day, absolutely,” says Walid Labadi, the IFC’s country manager for Egypt, Libya and Yemen. “We fundamentally believe in the power of the entrepreneurial spirit and its ability to address fundamental market needs, which will eventually create significant economic value and can become a driver for creating future entrepreneurs. Advertisement

Founded in 2008 by Ashraf Sabry and Mohamed Okasha, the company listed on the country’s main bourse, the Egyptian Exchange, in August 2019 and was valued at $275m. However, at the start of October this year, its valuation surpassed more than $1bn.It is the third African start-up to reach unicorn status and the first one to do so after going public on an African stock exchange.

Fawry offers an online payment gateway for business owners to transact with customers via cash, credit cards and e-wallets. It has helped to transform the Egyptian economy by reducing the reliance on cash, lowering costs and offering a more convenient way to pay. Its good fortune is partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic that prompted many people to place a high demand on its e-payment solutions. Its revenue for the first nine months of 2020 surged to E£892m ($57m), a 45% jump on the same period last year. 

Fawry gets CBE nod to partner with state-owned bank for transfer service: E-payments platform Fawry has received preliminary approval from the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to set up a bank transfer service for Egyptian expats; the service will be offered in partnership with an unnamed state-owned bank, CEO Ashraf Sabry tells Al Mal. Fawry has been in talks with several local and regional banks — including the National Bank of Egypt (NBE), Bank of Alexandria, Banque du Caire, and ADIB — to set up the remittances service for Egyptians living in the Gulf since last year, former managing director Mohamed Okasha said in December, saying at the time that the service would initially be rolled out in the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Remittances, particularly from expats in the GCC, are a key source of foreign currency for Egypt and helped to narrow its current account deficit through the worst of the pandemic in 3Q2019-2020.

Kiva takes due diligence and monitoring very seriously as part of our responsibility to lenders and borrowers. We encourage all lenders to learn about the risks of lending on Kiva as Kiva does not guarantee repayment on any loans. Lending on Kiva may involve loss of principal, for a variety of reasons including if the borrower doesn’t repay, the Field Partner doesn’t repay or from currency loss. The level of due diligence relevant to a specific loan on Kiva depends on a variety of factors, including how the loan is administered. Most loans on Kiva are administered by one of our local partners working in more than 80 countries. Kiva conducts due diligence on all Field Partners prior to allowing them to begin posting loans on the Kiva platform. To learn more about this process visit our Field Partner due diligence page.

At Kiva, we are constantly working to reach new countries and communities, with loans that better serve the needs of borrowers and their families. Kiva lenders crowdfund an average of $2.5 million in loans each week, creating a unique, renewable pool of funds that is reshaping access to financial services around the world

A uniquely integrated international fintech ecosystem that allows customers to make online money transfers using mobile money, bank account transfers, and cash pick-up services. We built Africa’s first truly global super app to help drive our ‘financial inclusion for all’ vision. A multi-service technology platform that brings together digital payment solutions, on-demand services, instant messaging, and digital media services in a single, easy-to-use mobile application. In some of our key markets across Africa, we have been able to drive financial inclusion from under 10% to 70-80% through solutions that have helped to create thousands of jobs and business opportunities for young entrepreneurs.

Our integrated platform offers multi-mobile financial services programmes, which depending on the target market, can be tailored to suit banked, unbanked and under-banked customer segments. We offer a rich pipeline of innovative use cases, including micro-loans, micro-savings (for individuals or groups), mobile business wallets, international remittances, and merchant payment solutions.