Spring 21 Capstone 640pm

Ethiopay is a four-party scheme, in which the issuer and acquirer are different entities, and is open for all payment institutions to join and issue their own cards. There are no limitations as to who may join the scheme, as long as the requirements of the scheme are met.Ethiopay Card schemes enables a simplified and guaranteed exchange of money between merchants, customers and their banks, by operating national & international networks and setting uniform standards.More specifically, Ethiopay defines rules for the routing of payment authorizations and settlement requests in point-of-sale and e-commerce transactions between merchant acquirers and card issuers, as well as ATM withdrawals or purchases with cashback transactions.

Ethswitch is the owner of Ethiopay-Ethiopia’s domestic Card Scheme. Ethiopay is developed for all banks in Ethiopia to issue and acquire payment cards.

Ethiopay is a four-party scheme, in which the issuer and acquirer are different entities, and is open for all payment institutions to join and issue their own cards. There are no limitations as to who may join the scheme, as long as the requirements of the scheme are met.Ethiopay Card schemes enables a simplified and guaranteed exchange of money between merchants, customers and their banks, by operating national & international networks and setting uniform standards.More specifically, Ethiopay defines rules for the routing of payment authorizations and settlement requests in point-of-sale and e-commerce transactions between merchant acquirers and card issuers, as well as ATM withdrawals or purchases with cashback transactions.

So far JUMO has analysed more than 33 terabytes of data to serve more than nine million customers in seven countries across Africa and Asia, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Pakistan.

Its mission is to build and operate inclusive digital banking marketplaces to advance financial inclusion for the 80 per cent of the world’s population who are excluded or underserved by traditional financial services.

As an investor partner, LeapFrog’s financial services expertise is being used for product design and multi-country rollouts, to turbocharge Jumo’s growth and spur financial inclusion across Africa.

Across the globe, smallholder farmers lose between $50 billion and $100 billion annually, often from natural disasters, but reportedly only 1% is insured from these accidents. As an example, in Feburary 2019, the company made several payouts to farmers in Kenya as poor rainfall caused large amount of crop failure.

Jason Schapiro, WorldCover Lead Engineer, said “Our algorithms are specifically calibrated to rainfall events by region and crop type, automatically triggering instant payouts to insured farmers through mobile money services like M-Pesa.”

Irrespective of its importance to the customers and financial system, ethioPay interbank service is operating inefficiently. Since there are no studies conducted on this topic especially on ethioPay, this study has been conducted with an objective of identifying challenges and opportunities of ethioPay ATM from perspectives of interconnected banks and supervisors.

Since 2017, AgroCenta has successfully completed two rounds of funding to the tune of $750,000 to expand operations in Ghana. In 2017, AgroCenta won the Seedstars Global Competition against other 72 startups from emerging markets across the globe. AgroCenta has grown its farmer base to 45,000 providing additional services of access to finance for smallholder farmers, bringing smallholder farmers onto the financial sector to enjoy services such as crop insurance, micro lending/input financing, mobile payments through mobile money and finally pensions schemes targeted at farmers and beneficiaries in the informal sector with special attention to women and youth. Since 2017, AgroCenta has helped over 28,000 farmers sell over 20,000MT of commodities to large, medium and small scale buyers across the country.   In December 2018, AgroCenta won a grant of $250,000 from GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Fund to further build its financial inclusion platform AgroPay targeted at rural smallholder farmers.

Operating in Uganda, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, and Pakistan, the fintech plans to expand its offering and service to Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. 

We’re optimistic about the possibilities in these markets and continue to see huge growth opportunities in Africa, with the potential to replicate our successes in other markets over the longer term.”

Their website allows individuals from North America and Europe to send payments for electricity bills, health insurance, school fees, and more to individuals in Ethiopia. Ethiopay fits the unique financial technology needs of Ethiopians. They hope to help Ethiopians in the diaspora reach individuals at home by providing seamless payments. Hadgu and Yohannes entered this year’s competition to share their innovative venture and gain exposure.

Their website allows individuals from North America and Europe to send payments for electricity bills, health insurance, school fees, and more to individuals in Ethiopia. Ethiopay fits the unique financial technology needs of Ethiopians. They hope to help Ethiopians in the diaspora reach individuals at home by providing seamless payments. Hadgu and Yohannes entered this year’s competition to share their innovative venture and gain exposure.

They are a centralized global payment platform that currently enables users a simple and convenient way to transfer and/or purchase cross border bill pay, money transfer, mobile data, and mobile minutes between the United States and Ethiopia. Ethiopay co-founders Daniel Hadgu (B.B.A. ‘20) and Minas Yohannes (B.B.A. ‘20) are Eritrean descent while Michael Gizachew is of Ethiopian descent and they all struggled to send funds between the U.S. and their family abroad. Together they created a way to affordably and efficiently transfer money overseas.

AgroCenta has raised a total of $2.2M in funding over 4 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 29, 2021 from a Seed round.

Developer of a peer-to-peer investment and insurance platform designed to offer cost-effective crop insurance to farmers

Smartel Money Ltd is company that is rooted in the Kingdom of Lesotho. The aim and focus of Smartel money is to provide mobile payment services, savings & credit and monetary transfers and serve thus as an alternative to traditional banking systems. We aim to provide to individuals, institutions, organizations, multi-industry sectors and governments with the cutting edge, fresh and innovative financial management system in this ever changing world. We also aim to improve the quality of cloud computing (payment as a service) and interaction between computers and people to achieve their payment processes.

At JUMO we connect people to opportunities. Two billion people worldwide have limited access to formal financial services such as borrowing and saving. We’ve built a large-scale, multi-sided technology platform and designed progressive financial choices to reach them. We use their digital footprint to create a financial identity using only behavioural data.

ICT platform for mobile banking: micro money transfer (P2P), pay my bill, send local/international remittances, online payment solutions, buy calling credit. Ethiopia is one of the most underbanked countries, only 5% of the population has a bank account. Currently 617 bank branches in Ethiopia are serving 85 million people. Most rural areas lack banking infrastructure. Innovation: send money directly to anyone with a mobile phone, a free bank account for the receiver is opened promptly.

The main focus for Hello brands is what customers want and expect from the respective services.

The Hello brands are aspiring and inclusive, aiming to connect all Ethiopian citizens for a brighter future; a future that unlocks the potential of the country and its diverse people

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. Though each Hello brand represents a different service, they all share one key feature – the mobile phone is the access point for their service. The main focus for Hello brands is what customers want and expect from the respective services. The Hello brands are aspiring and inclusive, aiming to connect all Ethiopian citizens for a brighter future; a future that unlocks the potential of the country and its diverse people. The Hello brands say ‘Hello’​ to their customers and offer them essential services with a high level of convenience, quality and affordability. 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; Financial Inclusion (HelloCash)

Mobile Money and Financial Development: The Case of M-PESA in Kenya by Scott Burns :: SSRN

They conducted a technical evaluation of the Mojaloop platform. While Mojaloop seemed to provide the required functionality, for a live deployment it lacked definition around auxiliary requirements to move into production.

EthioPay wanted to continue adding value for the Ethiopian banking sector through additional services and products. They wanted to add a number of different switch use cases (e.g. merchants, CICO, etc) to their ATM switch.

We use advanced data science and machine learning to create the fastest and leanest financial services infrastructure.

Our partners use our technology stack to offer savings, lending and insurance products to entrepreneurs in emergingmarkets.These next-generation products give anyone with a cell phone and mobile wallet access to unprecedented financial choice, enabling millions of people to prosper, build their businesses and drive economic growth.

Automated financial advising (robo-advising) has become an established practice in wealth management, yet very few studies have looked at the cross-section of the robo-advisors and the factors explaining the persistent variability in their portfolio allocation recommendations. Using a sample of 53 advising platforms from the US and Germany, we show that the underlying algorithms manage to identify different risk profiles, although substantial variability is evident even within the same investor types' groups. The robo-advisor expertise in a particular asset class seems to play a significant role, as does the geographical location, while the breadth of the offered investment choice (number of portfolios) across the robo-advisors under study does not seem to have an effect.

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;

Mobile Money: The Economics of M-PESA | NBER