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Jun 2018
WhatsApp Set to Be Africa’s Biggest Payments and Ad Platform
June, 30 2018
Africa - While there’s no guarantee WhatsApp will be Africa’s biggest payments player in the long term, if it is able to navigate the regulatory environment in larger African economies like South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya it would have a significant headstart over local fintech startups still trying to convince both partners and customers to use their services ...
Pakistan: Women and Empowerment
June, 29 2018
Pakistan - The process of engagement has put women at the centre of the household economy and decision-making ...
Ghana: Digitising Financial Services Key to Boosting Financial Inclusion
June, 28 2018
Ghana - Ghana can drive financial inclusion further up if it takes advantage of opportunities to digitize payments in various sectors including government, agriculture, utilities, investments, insurance and savings, among others ...
Global Consensus Still Lacking on Cryptocurrency Regulation
June, 28 2018
Global - The pace of cryptocurrency regulation continues to heat up globally, but there's still little consensus on how to properly insure that investor protections make sense yet are effective, while at the same time allowing the asset class to thrive. ...
India May Get Rid of Extreme Poverty by 2030, under 3% to Remain Poor by 2020: Report
June, 27 2018
India - About 44 Indians come out of extreme poverty every minute, one of the fastest rates of poverty reduction in the worl ...
400 Companies Poised to Advance SDGs, Generate Returns Make Up New Swell Investing Portfolio
June, 26 2018
Global - Highlighting the importance of transparency in investing, impact investing platform Swell Investing has invited the public to vote on the final security in the Impact 400, a portfolio with the goal of offering investors 400 companies poised for impact and returns ...
Zimbabwe: Launch of Zim Women's Bank - a Milestone
June, 26 2018
Zimbabwe - With only 27 percent of women having access to formal banking products and accounting only for 10 percent of total bank loans, a dedicated microfinance bank for women can significantly contribute to the empowerment of women ...
This Microfinance Institution Wants to Help Rural Indian Women to Fulfill their Dreams of Entrepreneurship
June, 25 2018
India - Chasing a dream of having your own business is a story in itself. And a lot of rural Indian women today are dreaming to become the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Thanks to the increasing number of Non-banking financial institutions and micro-finance companies today, which are being the pillars of strength to women in India ...
Woori Bank Secures Korea's Largest Offshore Branch Network on Takeover in Cambodia
June, 24 2018
Cambodia - Woori Bank has acquired Cambodia’s microfinance institution VisionFund Cambodia, becoming a South Korean financial company with the largest offshore retail branch network ...
Cameroon: Microfinance Loan Delinquency - Prevention Bureau Goes Operational
June, 22 2018
Cameroon - The newly created Risk Prevention Bureau for Microfinance Institutions (CREMF) has been launched. It was launched yesterday June 21 by the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze who doubles as President of the National Credit Council ...
India: Drip Capital Raises $15 Million from Accel, Sequoia, Wing VC
June, 21 2018
India - With the recent funding, the California-based fintech company plans to scale up operations in India and replicate the model in other geographie ...
Nigeria: Enhancing Mobile Money Penetration
June, 21 2018
Nigeria - The recent GSMA report showed that although the adoption of mobile money globally is on the increase, the situation is not the same with Nigeria, writes Emma Okonj ...
Financial Inclusion Makes Big Inroads into Myanmar
June, 21 2018
Myanmar - Myanmar has seen a significant increase in the numbers of adults with access to at least one formal financial services product, according to research presented on June 19 as part of the nationwide Making Access Possible (MAP) financial inclusion study ...
For Just $5, You Can Now Start a Responsible Investment Portfolio
June, 19 2018
Global - Newday wants to open up investing for impact–with funds focused on issues from ocean cleanup and gender equality–to people with just a little cash ...
China’s Super Angels Go Full Throttle on Indian Startups
June, 19 2018
China & India - Prominent Chinese entrepreneurs who have built some of the biggest internet companies in their home country are seeking to invest in Indian startups that are still at incubation stage ...
What Investors Are Looking for in Africa’s Fintech Sector
June, 18 2018
Africa - Africa has long been considered a global leader in fintech innovation and adoption. The continent’s low penetration rates for traditional banking services coupled with high penetration of mobile phones makes it a rich breeding ground for fintech innovation, and in many respects the continent has been miles ahead of other developing – and most developed – markets ...
D. Rozas, Co-Founder, MIMOSA Project, Senior Microfinance Expert, e-MFP: Using Findex Wisely - Understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of the World’s Biggest Financial Inclusion Dataset
June, 18 2018
Global - But when using Findex, there are important things to keep in mind. First, while the overall figures and trends are important, the numbers for any one country should be treated with caution. This is not because we mistrust the Findex team or their work. It’s simply the result of what Findex is – a set of surveys based on randomly selected (hopefully representative) population samples of more than 150,000 adults in over 140 economies. And surveys can – and often do – go wrong, particularly when they deal with difficult or personal subjects (like finance) or are conducted in countries undergoing political and economic turmoil ...
T. Khanna, Professor, Harvard Business School: When Technology Gets Ahead of Society
June, 17 2018
Global - It’s clear that even as innovations bring unprecedented comfort and convenience, they also threaten old ways of regulating industries, running a business, and making a living. This has always been true ...
A Third of Start-Ups Aim for Social Good - But Social Entrepreneurs Struggle to Attract Sufficient Funding
June, 15 2018
Global - Social entrepreneurship, once a niche area, is spreading its wings. Across the world, almost half as many people are creating ventures with a primarily social or environmental purpose as those with a solely commercial aim, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), a multi-country study ...
E. Rhyne, Executive Director, S. Kelly, Research Director, Center for Financial Inclusion: Is Financial Inclusion Stalling? The 2017 Findex Results Raise Several Red Flags
June, 14 2018
Global - What if we opened millions of bank accounts but nobody used them? That is one of several conundrums raised by the recently released Global Findex data for 2017 ...
Egypt: No Clear Incentives for Egypt’s MFIs to Transform from NGOs into For-Profit Companies - IFC
June, 13 2018
Egypt - A new study by the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, investigated the potential benefits of transforming microfinance institutions (MFIs) from not-for-profit organisations into for-profit ones ...
Global SMEs Set to Benefit from Blockchain-Based Financial Services Marketplace
June, 12 2018
Global - Last week Chinese financial services company Ant Financial raised a $14 billion funding round giving it a valuation of up to $150 billion, a staggering figure by any tech industry standard. While the image of 150 so-called unicorns jumping and cavorting wildly in front of this writer’s eyes comes forth much too easily, this shows how quickly the global FinTech market is being transformed ...
ONEm Develops the World’s First Blockchain Hybrid Wallet
June, 12 2018
Global - mCoin, the world’s first cryptocurrency which works with or without the internet, is pleased to announce the release of a secure hybrid SMS wallet. mCoin wallet is unlike others available on the market because it is compatible with more than five billion mobile phones ...
Featured: TransUnion to Deliver More Credit Solutions to Rwandans
June, 11 2018
Rwanda - Officials at TransUnion, one of the world’s leading information and risk services providers, have reiterated their strong commitment to deliver much-needed credit solutions to their Rwandan consumers ...
The World's Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) Commit to Mobilize $3 Billion Dollars to Invest in the World's Women
June, 09 2018
Global - A major new commitment was announced today by the development finance institutions (DFI) of the G7 to mobilize US $3 billion by 2020 for investment in business activities that will benefit women ...
India: Digital SME Lenders Bank on Co-Lending to Make their Presence Felt
June, 09 2018
India - If corporate lending was the flavour of the season at the turn of the decade, then retail lending has captured the attention of financiers over the last few years. Now, it is lending to the country’s small and medium enterprises, which is attracting increased focus from both traditional and new-age financial sector entities ...
M. Simon, Managing Director, Candide Group: Can Impact Investing Avoid the Failures of Microfinance?
June, 08 2018
Global - How do we make sure that the blossoming impact investment movement — especially as it starts to supplant traditional aid — actually leads to improvements in outcomes for the people and communities it is supposed to benefit ...
Investors Make an Impact in Central America
June, 08 2018
Central America - Small businesses in Central America are benefitting from the growing role of local impact funds, as healthy returns and the chance to make a difference attract investors ...
‘Nigeria Achieved 5% Reduction in Financial Exclusion in 8yrs’
June, 07 2018
Nigeria - According to the apex bank, in 2010, it set a target to reduce the number of financially excluded Nigerians from 46 per cent in 2010 to 20 per cent in 2020, but only succeeded in reducing the number to 41 per cent as at the last count in 2018, which is a five per cent reduction in 8 years ...
Start-Ups and Digital Innovation: Are Fintechs in Africa Over-Indebting their Customers?
June, 07 2018
Global - Demand for credit in Africa exceeds supply, despite the rise in mobile money. Yet start-ups, growing daily in number, are at risk of accelerating over-indebtedness, by supplying credit to clients without conducting appropriate repayment capacity analysis. Digital lenders need to understand the risks of over-indebtedness from a client perspective, and algorithms need to evolve to take this into account. Regulation also must guide good practice for fintech digital lenders ...
Malawi and IFAD Launch New Project to Reduce Extreme Poverty Among Poor Rural Households
June, 06 2018
Malawi - The total cost of the project is US$57.7 million, including a $21 million loan and $21 million debt sustainability framework grant from IFAD. The project will be cofinanced by the Government of Malawi ($9.6 million) and by the beneficiaries themselves ($6.2 million) ...
China: Ant Financial Shifts Focus from Finance to Tech Services
June, 05 2018
China - Ant Financial Services Group,the dominant Chinese fintech company, is shifting its main focus to technology services and away from payments and consumer finance as Beijing’s crackdown on financial risk deepens, four sources with knowledge of the matter said ...
First Blockchain Based Platform Unveiled in Rwanda
June, 05 2018
Rwanda - Blockbonds together with I&M Bank Rwanda, yesterday officially announced the rollout of the first blockchain based platform, SPENN ...
Nigeria: Central Bank Gives Approval to Africa’s First Farmers’ Microfinance Bank
June, 04 2018
Nigeria - The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, has given approval to Africa’s first farmers microfinance bank to operate in the Unit Category in Nigeria ...
Zimbabwe: RBZ Licenses Women's Bank
June, 04 2018
Zimbabwe - The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has licensed and authorized the Women's Microfinance Bank to conduct deposit-taking microfinance business ...
Legal Avenue to Exploitative Microfinance in Sri Lanka
June, 04 2018
Sri Lanka - Microfinance provides a gateway for financial institutions to reach and exploit the earnings of poorer sections of society by charging high interest rates. The unregulated and exorbitant interest rates have attracted many finance companies to enter the microfinance marke ...
Opinion: How to Turn Housing Microfinance Mainstream
June, 04 2018
Global - Across Africa, 85 percent of the population simply don’t have access to the formal financing — credit, savings, or mortgages — that would allow them to build or improve their homes. ...
Limits of the ‘Girls Effect’
June, 01 2018
Global - Focusing on adolescent girls to achieve major development goals is in vogue within development circles these days. Whether young girls can be the key to overcoming a range of development challenges across the so-called ‘developing world’ however remains a contentious issue ...

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