Mesofinance Media - News #Technology

ITU offers tools, training to boost resilience of digital financial services infrastructure

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:26:29 -0500

The UN’s International Telecommunication Union recently rolled out a “Cyber Security Resilience Assessment toolkit for DFS Critical Infrastructure” to help regulators and practitioners protect the systems that make digital financial services possible. The toolkit is based on the following “pillars”: Risk Management, Governance, Testing, Training & Awareness, Protection, and Incident Response. ITU also offers in-person and remote “security clinics” several times per year.

USAID expands Feed the Future program to Guatemala in effort to boost incomes, food security, resilience in rural areas

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 15:01:41 -0500

The US government’s Agency for International Development recently announced it has budgeted USD 6 million to support the financial inclusion of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises owned by people in Guatemala who are members of one or more of the following groups: women, young people and indigenous citizens. Elements of the program are aimed at “enhancing financial literacy… and helping financial service providers reach underserved rural markets with better, tailored products.” The goals include to boost savings, investments in agriculture, food security and access to digital financial services. Another part of the program is to help people who receive remittances to leverage these funds to meet community goals. The effort is part of a project called Feed the Future, which is active in 20 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

RBI blocks fintech Paytm from accepting deposits into its mobile money wallets as of March 1

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 12:07:05 -0500

The Reserve Bank of India, citing “persistent non-compliance” with rules relating to “falsifying customer information and money laundering” has told Paytm, a fintech with 330 million users in India, that it may no longer accept deposits into its customers’ e-wallets. The company has denied wrongdoing.

Customers will continue to be able to use their balances after the February 29 deposit deadline. They also will continue to have access to the Paytm app to make transfers among third-party financial services providers.

Paytm’s mobile money wallet allows balances up to the equivalent of USD 2,400. The firm’s services include allowing businesses to accept electronic payments as well as helping customers access payment cards and third-party services such as insurance, loans, investment products, bill payments, and event and travel tickets. Paytm is a publicly traded firm that was founded in 2010.

Ghana Enterprises Agency, Mastercard Foundation Launch BizBox Program, Aiming to Help 250k Youth Acquire Employment

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:20:27 -0500

Ghana Enterprises Agency, through which the government of Ghana supports micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, recently partnered with the Canada-based Mastercard Foundation in an effort to support 250,000 young people in acquiring “dignified and fulfilling jobs.” Among the goals of the project is to serve 25,000 people with disabilities and 175,000 women. The program is called Business in a Box - or BizBox - and includes training in life skills and business skills along with access to technology, finance, markets and networking opportunities. The program has a local-currency budget equivalent to USD 55 million and runs until 2027.

Invest in Africa Summit \ 16-17 April \ the Hague, the Netherlands

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 14:02:47 -0500

This annual gathering promotes trade between Africa and Europe, North America and Asia. The agenda includes country-specific meetings and discussions of investment opportunities for the African diaspora. The conference themes include Agribusiness, Climate Financing, Renewable Energy and Technology. The cost to attend ranges from the equivalent of USD 1,100 to USD 1,640. For further information, you may contact the organizers via +31 616 950 384 or info@investinginafrica.eu.

ICT4D \ 19-20 March \ Accra, Ghana

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 09:13:34 -0500

This annual gathering is intended to promote innovations in technology that “are making a measurable difference millions of lives” through humanitarian relief, development projects and conservation efforts. The event’s themes include digital inclusion, digital health, food security, agriculture, and youth engagement and employment. The primary sponsor is the US-based NGO Catholic Relief Services. The cost to attend ranges from USD 250 to USD 1,000. For further information, you may contact the organizers via +1 757 748 5003 or adminict4dconf@crs.org.

A Technical Guide to Unlock Agent Networks at the Last Mile \ Achmad Budiman et al \ CGAP

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 10:44:17 -0500

Mr Budiman et al present several examples of successful implementations of rural cash-in / cash-out agent networks, which enable customers to exchange cash for electronic money and vice versa. According to the Global Findex, 1.4 billion adults are financially excluded, and 31 percent of this group lives far from any financial institutions. Rural CICO agent networks are one way to address this gap in access to financial services.

Bancolombia invested in rural CICO agents in Colombia, allowing these private ventures to reach a significant number of rural customers. Without such an investor, rural enterprises may find the up-front cost of becoming agents too high. Government subsidies can help, as can technical assistance from domestic and international investors.

To expand rural CICO agent networks, the authors suggest that providers of digital financial services: (1) carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the rural market in question; (2) consider outsourcing agent training to a third party; (3) in addition to training rural agents, create a salesforce to build rural demand; and (4) focus on engaging women as agents.

This is a summary of a paper published by CGAP that was written by Achmad Budiman, Nadine Chehade, William Cook, Patrick Meagher, Alice Negre, Anand Raman, Corinne Riquet, Paul Reynolds.

Summary by: Pranav Agarwal

Pomelo raises $40m in equity to help more businesses in Latin America accept payment cards

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:40:04 -0500

Pomelo, which is based in Argentina and also has offices in four other South American countries and Mexico, recently closed its Series B funding round. The company helps other companies accept their customers’ credit, debit and pre-paid cards, including through partnerships with the US-based payments firms Mastercard and Visa. The new investments in Pomelo, which total USD 40 million, bring its total amount raised to USD 103 million since the launch of the company in 2021. Kaszek, an investor in technology in Latin America, led the funding round, with participation from multiple other firms, including Brazil-based Monashees. Each of these investors will take a seat on Pomelo’s board of directors.

Financial Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities \ Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta et al \ Alliance for Financial Inclusion

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:20:41 -0500

Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta and her colleagues analyzed the National Financial Inclusion Strategies of 16 countries. Although 1 billion people in the world live with disabilities, this segment comprises less than 0.5 percent of the customers of global microfinance institutions. Approximately 80 percent of those who live in low-income countries and have disabilities do participate in the informal sector through self-employment. However, the World Bank estimates that the remaining barriers to the economic inclusion of this group reduce global GDP by 5% to 7%.

The obstacles preventing people with disabilities from accessing formal financial services include: (1) lack of education; (2) discrimination; (3) inadequate training of staff of financial services providers; (4) regulatory frameworks that fail to incentivize FSPs to design services for people with disabilities or to foster greater “access [to] and usage of adaptive financial technologies;” (5) lack of access to mobile phones - particularly smartphones; and (6) shortage of data to assess the needs of people with disabilities and to create and monitor programs and policies to address those needs.

Among the actions noted from the National Financial Inclusion Strategies are: (1) expansion of Kenya’s National Development Fund for Persons with Disabilities; (2) lowered tills and access ramps in financial institutions and social welfare offices in Uganda; (3) documents offered in braille, sign language translation and ramp installations in bank branches as well as job quotas for people with disabilities in Pakistan; and (4) tactile features added to paper currency in the Philippines.

In closing, the authors suggest three measures: (1) increasing access to assistive financial technologies; (2) gathering data classified by type of disability, age and gender to improve policies and product development; and (3) developing government plans targeting the three dimensions of financial services: access, usage and quality. As part of this process, the authors emphasize the importance of engaging people with disabilities - and representative organizations - in all phases of the strategies: design, execution and monitoring.

This is a summary of a paper that the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI) published in November 2023. The authors are Adriana Carolina Armos Cuesta, Isabela Pradere da Silva Ramos, Daniel Ricardo Meza Rodriguez, Diana Schvarztein and Robin Newnham.

Summary by: Renata Samadova

Orange Money engages TerraPay to offer remittances in Mali

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 14:34:06 -0500

The local arm of Orange Money, a mobile money service of France-based telecom Orange, has launched a partnership with TerraPay, a UK-based cross-border payments network, to allow people in Mali to receive money from 210 countries. The transactions generally take less than one minute to process. Recipients can cash out the money or keep it in their mobile wallets to relay to other people, send bill payments or make retail purchases. Orange has 287 million customers in 26 countries, including 13 million mobile users in Mali.

Author: Rohan Kumar Agarwal