Spring 21 Capstone 640pm

‘KYC’ is one of the most important terms in FinTech, as ‘knowing your customer’ is a regulatory requirement for all financial institutions. The main goal is fraud prevention and constraining the ability of certain users who do not meet given acceptance criteria. Traditionally of course, this was done entirely in person, with account holders visiting their banks with the relevant ID documents. But for the past years, KYC has been moving increasingly into the digital domain. This move has brought a vast range of benefits to users and FinTech providers alike, but a number of challenges remain. Below, we outline some of these and present you with ways in which to combat them if you’re looking to set-up, or improve your digital finance platform, or to improve your customer experience.

Fawry for Banking & Payment Technology Services SAE, an Egyptian digital payments provider, was listed on Cairo’s exchange about a year back. The company recently experienced a 300% increase in its market value to 20 billion Egyptian pounds (appr. $1.3 billion). The payments firm confirmed that its valuation has grown 4x since the COVID-19 outbreak in late February 2020. As first reported by Bloomberg, Fawry is now ranked among Egypt’s 10 most valuable firms, which include Telecom Egypt Co. and Elswedy Electric Co. However, these businesses are generating a lot more revenue compared to Fawry for now. Many locals in Egypt are still settling transactions with cash payments, despite the Coronavirus crisis which has made it unsafe to handle paper currency notes. However, the nation’s reserve bank has asked lending platforms and other financial service providers to encourage residents to make digital payments via mobile wallets. The central bank also wants Egyptians to use online payment platforms like Fawry in order to limit physical contact, so that the virus doesn’t spread further.

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 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.

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.

Funding Pula: Insuretech Startup Closes $6M Series A Funding to Scale Up Business Across Africa 0 SharesShareTweetSharePin The African Insuretech service provider, Pula, has recently closed a US$6 million Series A funding round led by TLcom Capital and had participation from Women’s World Banking. It specializes in digital as well as agric insurance to derisk smallholder farmers across Africa. This new round of investment to the insuretech startup will be used to scale up operations in the company’s existing 13 markets across Africa. Pula has so far impacted over 4.3 million farmers on the continent and the new funding will help push its expansion into Asia to power resilience and profitability for Asian smallholder farmers. Pula was launched by Rose Goslinga and Thomas Njeru in 2015, to design and deliver innovative agricultural insurance and digital products to help smallholders farmers improve their farming practices, endure climate risks and bolster their incomes. This has become necessary because for smallholder farmers in emerging markets, the traditional method of calculating insurance through farm visits is often expensive, meaning they are often neglected from financial protection against climate risks.

The strategy has two hallmarks: (1) it looks for relevant conditions that are both material and symbolic or ideational, and (2) it looks for relevant conditions arising throughout the course of the digital innovation’s developmental trajectory.

The service will allow customers to send money to bank accounts and mobile wallets in 15 countries, including Uganda, the United Kingdom, India, China and Germany. SimbaPay previously set up a similar service for transfers to Asia with Kenya’s Family Bank in 2018. Africa has been among the most prominent regions for fintech development as users, banks and technology companies have bypassed traditional banking to embrace mobile banking and payment services.

SimbaPay head of operations Victor Karanja said in a statement: “Businesses as well as Kenyans and expatriates with friends and family abroad send over USD 18 billion to other African countries, Asia and Europe annually with several billion Kenya Shillings going through the SimbaPay network.”

The goal of blockchain is to digitally record information to be distributed but not tampered with. It is an open, decentralized ledger that records transactions and entries that are confirmed by peer-to-peer networks and encrypted. The data is stored into a “block,” or a fixed event that has been approved and locked into place. Each block is then added to the “chain” of events, leading to the methodology’s moniker. Each record is easily verifiable and incorruptible. The network cannot be influenced by a single party nor taken down because it exists in multiple distributed places.  

“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.

Two weeks ago a Kenyan fintech provider PULA was among 20 finalists pitching at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The presentation by the CTO Sitati Kituyi was selected among the winners, enabling the company to walk away with a cash prize of USD 50,000, getting an exclusive opportunity for networking with investors and a fast-tracked application for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof-of-Concept Scheme. Pula ‘restructures agricultural insurance and seeks to use technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured and untapped market of smallhodlers across the globe. It facilitates crop and livestock insurance coverage and works with Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs, research institutions, and governments to help provide smallholders the protection they need in an increasingly unpredictable market.’ The finalists who eventually pitched for the Global Fintech Hackcelerator were selected through two parallel scouting programmes. The local programme which aimed to tackle problem statements originating from the financial industry in Singapore and the broader Asia region saw 10 winners shortlisted from among 200 submissions by companies across 30 countries.

Pula is providing radically restructured agriculture insurance for smallhold farmers in Africa. Using satellite technology and data to provide previously uninsured landowners with a better safety net, Pula policies are free for the farmers. Premiums are paid by input companies or farm aggregators whose business interests are served by protecting farmers’ incomes.

Fintech is one of the buzziest trends in financial services right now, and no financial institution wants to be left behind. But with seemingly boundless opportunities, how do you know which fintech partnerships make sense for your FI? Here are seven tips for making sure your fintech activities align with your business strategy: Start with a clearly defined business strategy. Strategy, not technology, should drive your fintech decisions. Before considering any fintech partnerships, make sure you have a clearly defined and communicated business strategy that aligns with your FI’s objectives. Don’t get on board with a promising technology and then build a strategy around it. Don’t blindly jump into opportunities that fall in your lap—seek out partnerships that will support your goals. Don’t just sign on for a fintech partnership because it sounds cool. Only experiment with fintech if you have a goal and purpose in mind. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t spread your focus too thinly. Not every new initiative needs to have ties to a fintech partnership. Only experiment in areas that are important to your business. Use your limited resources to explore fintech that can make a significant contribution to your FI. Experimenting with fintech partnerships that do nothing to drive bottom-line results may not be a good use of time and effort.

A lot of times an FI will direct IT staff to develop fintech partnerships. While IT has a lot of insight to offer, they don’t have all the information to drive the decision. Business and IT need to work together to find and deploy fintech partnerships that make sense. It shouldn’t be a strictly business or tech initiative.

Fintech is one of the buzziest trends in financial services right now, and no financial institution wants to be left behind. But with seemingly boundless opportunities, how do you know which fintech partnerships make sense for your FI? Here are seven tips for making sure your fintech activities align with your business strategy: Start with a clearly defined business strategy. Strategy, not technology, should drive your fintech decisions. Before considering any fintech partnerships, make sure you have a clearly defined and communicated business strategy that aligns with your FI’s objectives. Don’t get on board with a promising technology and then build a strategy around it. Don’t blindly jump into opportunities that fall in your lap—seek out partnerships that will support your goals. Don’t just sign on for a fintech partnership because it sounds cool. Only experiment with fintech if you have a goal and purpose in mind. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t spread your focus too thinly. Not every new initiative needs to have ties to a fintech partnership. Only experiment in areas that are important to your business. Use your limited resources to explore fintech that can make a significant contribution to your FI. Experimenting with fintech partnerships that do nothing to drive bottom-line results may not be a good use of time and effort.

We work across Africa and Asia, and in 2019 alone, we facilitated crop and livestock insurance cover to 1.1mln farmers and have offered our products in 11 markets from Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique. Since starting in 2015 our products have reached over 3.4mln households. Our Founders work in insurance has been recognized by several international awards including the Financial Times/IFC Award for Sustainable Finance, the Singapore Fintech Festival, Womens World Banking, Credit Suisse, and InsureTech3.0.

This is not a full list of hot agritech startups in Africa. But when you add Pula – a Kenyan farm insurance startup – to the above, it shows the variety of data-driven innovations aiming to re-organise and fill gaps across the agricultural value chain. From farm to factory to food.

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

The Central Bank of Lesotho has authorised mobile money issuers to increase the daily limit of transactions for duly identified and verified mobile money customers. The Bank came about this decision of authorisation in order to facilitate a wider use of electronic payments for goods and services by the public during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Central Bank of Lesotho has authorised mobile money issuers to increase the daily limit of transactions for duly identified and verified mobile money customers. The Bank came about this decision of authorisation in order to facilitate a wider use of electronic payments for goods and services by the public during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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 Insurtech award which targets non-insurers collaborating with insurers to improve customer service delivery, product development and innovation was organised by the African Reinsurance Corporation (Africa Re). The company was recognised for successfully managing over 4.3 million smallholder farmers through their Area Yield Index Insurance product. It provides insurance services and digital solutions to farmers in 12 countries in Africa, with Nigeria being the leading market for Pula.

“Through our digital platforms, we aim to make available a one stop solution to our customers in terms of funds transfer and with the inclusion of SimbaPay, our customers will now send money to friends and family across the world at the comfort of their mobile phones,” added Mr. Kantaria.

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.