Spring 21 Capstone 640pm

Funded through a government innovation agency and a successful crowdsourcing campaign, the start-up has also won several awards and grants, including best start-up in 2014's Global Innovation through Science & Technology competition.Last year, it was chosen by the International Red Cross as a provider for its Fire Sensors initiative, a project that has distributed 900 of the devices along with extensive market research.Julie Arrighi, Innovation Advisor at the American Red Cross, said that using networked heat sensors like Lumkani is crucial to mitigating the growing risk of slum fires around the world.

Fawry platform allows you to access a long list of payments opportunities in a very easy, transparent and efficient way

If you look at mobile payments specifically, Africa is actually one of the leaders in this space.Kobus Ehlers, SnapScan, co-founderMeanwhile, Africa's smartphone market is expected to double over the following four years -- at the moment, South Africa is reportedly the biggest smartphone market in sub-Saharan Africa, with a 19% penetration.And as smartphones increase, the paying methods are also becoming smarter."If you look at mobile payments specifically, Africa is actually one of the leaders in this space," says Kobus Ehlers, co-founder of the SnapScan app. "SnapScan was developed in South Africa for the African market, so we try to find really local and relevant solutions and I think it's going to get a massive uptake," he adds.

Using your phone to pay for goods and services is nothing new in Africa, a continent where there are more than 720 million mobile phones. Services such as M-Pesa, the revolutionary Kenyan mobile payment system that allows people to bypass banks and pay bills, withdraw salaries and transfer cash electronically, have transformed the way people and business operate.

Fawry Plus is the first banking agent authorized by the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), providing diverse banking and financial services, in addition to other unique services, to individuals and businesses through a network or retail branches. Fawry Plus aims to cover all Egypt, especially the areas that have an insufficient number of financial institutions compared to the population density. With Fawry Plus, financial services will become easier and more convenient.

The startup intends to expand its geographical presence nationwide, besides its network of small enterprises, Nouh elaborated.Founded last year, Capiter is a mobile app connecting grocery stores and retail markets to leading food suppliers in the country, the CEO added.The company also plans to start its expansion with Alexandria and the Nile Delta area over the coming period, Nouh said.

​​Stellenbosch University (SU) is the first university in South Africa to make use of the SnapScan in-app payment solutions for payments on its campuses, so that students no longer have to carry cash with them for certain payments.

SnapScap is a mobile application that enables cashless payments. Initially two of SnapScan's in-app payment mechanisms will be available for students to do bill payments for their student fees, as well as for pre-paid internet and printer credits. These payments previously had to be made (in cash or with card) at the University's cashiers in the central administration building

Apart from SnapScan in-app payments, students also have an online option on the SU's website where they have the options of pre-paids (for internet, meals, washing, printing credits and rides) and bill payments (for student fees).

FarmDrive is a Kenyan ¬based social enterprise that is unlocking access to financial services for over 50 million smallholder farmers in Africa. Using simple mobile phone technology, alternative data sets, and sophisticated data analytics, FarmDrive is closing the critical information gap that keeps smallholder farmers from getting loans that would allow them to grow and diversify their businesses. Potentially creditworthy smallholder farmers are often denied loans because they lack the traditional credit profiles that lenders rely on to evaluate borrowers.FarmDrive bridges the funding gap between smallholder farmers and financial institutions in two ways. The first step is to bring together multiple streams of data to create yield-predictive agronomic algorithms specific to each farming vertical and geographical region. T hese streams of data can be classified into three categories: 1. Agronomic Data: crop portfolio, soil health, drainage, weeds, pests, etc. 2. Remote Sensing Data: vegetation, weather conditions, climate trends, etc. 3. Market Data: offtake security, price trends, etc. FarmDrive then creates credit profiles for farmers by combining the agronomic algorithm with behavioral data. The behavioral data is obtained from farmers through a simple SMS/Android mobile phone application. With this application, Farmers can track their revenues and expenses, and also send demographic information to FarmDrive.

In Kenya, mobile money is almost synonymous with Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

When Kenya’s leading telco Safaricom introduced M-Pesa in 2007, it started out as a simple transfer service that allowed users to send and receive money with their mobile phones. Safaricom has since rolled out other M-Pesa services like loans and payments.

This is a super exciting time for Egyptian fintechs. For Fawry to reach a market cap of $1 billion within one year of its IPO is quite impressive and is a moment to celebrate. This will help the whole industry and will open more doors for fintechs to receive funds and make partial exits.

Commenting on the news, Okasha told WAYA: “This is a super exciting time for Egyptian fintechs. For Fawry to reach a market cap of $1 billion within one year of its IPO is quite impressive and is a moment to celebrate. This will help the whole industry and will open more doors for fintechs to receive funds and make partial exits.”Fintechs and electronic banking companies have seen a huge increase in demand as a result of the pandemic. Fawry saw an increase of more than 50% of the company’s value before the Covid-19 crisis. This number grew exponentially during the crisis.The company went public on the Egyptian Exchange in August 2019, since then its stock price has increased by over 300%. The initial cost of one share at the company was EGP 6.46.According to Fawry’s website, it handles around 2.1 million transactions daily and collected $2.43 billion last year. It has approximately 20 million customers.

Most smallholder Kenyan farmers are excluded from the financial system because they do not have a satisfactory credit profile. Without access to formal credit systems, they use alternative systems providing credit at high-interest rates, which, in addition, are not well suited to support their farm and off-farm activities.Having done this, the FarmDrive team met banks and organisations financing smallholder farmers to better understand the reasons for exclusion. They discovered that it is often the lack of information that locks farmers out of the financial system. They decided to try to fill this gap by collecting information from farmers, and analysing the data obtained, establishing their credit profile. Once this is done, farmers can apply for a loan via the platform FarmDrive.

African smallholder farmers face a recurring problem of access to finance and credit. Financial institutions, for their part, do not have access to many potential customers, considered as too risky. Young Kenyan computer scientists have developed FarmDrive, an application that aims to promote access to credit and financial services for smallholder farmers. banks remain to be won over, but the project is on track.

The shares that were listed at the price of EGP 6.46 soared 31 percent to close at EGP 8.48  on the first day of trading, which gives the company a market cap close to EGP 6 billion or $366 million.

Fawry was acquired by a consortium of three investors; Helios Investment Partners, MENA Long-Term Value Fund, and Egyptian-American Enterprise in 2015. The three investors had reportedly acquired 85 percent of the company at a valuation of $100 million.

Safaricom PLC and Ant Financial Services – the world’s largest fintech services provider – have announced a partnership that will allow Kenyans shopping on AliExpress to pay for their purchases using M-PESA.

Safaricom PLC and Ant Financial Services – the world’s largest fintech services provider – have announced a partnership that will allow Kenyans shopping on AliExpress to pay for their purchases using M-PESA.

Kenyans shopping on Aliexpress.com will be presented with M-PESA as one of the payment options when checking out their shopping cart on the website. Once customers select M-PESA, they will then key in their mobile phone numbers and will subsequently receive a prompt on their phones to type their M-PESA PIN to complete the payment.