I’ve worked in consumer lending since I graduated college. Form the dusty streets of Dar es Salaam to the mountains of Cape Town, I’ve witnessed most of the spectrum in consumer lending. When I started in microfinance, it was a…
If the number of credit providers in a country was a reliable heuristic for identifying a credit bubble, you would say that yes, Kenya is in a credit bubble. However, that is unfair since while it might be a reliable…
What makes a good collection method? The collections game has largely stayed the same, with methods based on direct debits or some form of peer or authority pressure remaining the most popular. Payroll lending and some digital lenders use direct…
Blockchain is all the rage. People all around the world participated in a wild run-up of the price of the blockchain currencies/assets last year, and are now suffering significant losses in the sell-off. But this was a small piece of…
I’ve been in the mobile money space now for nine years. It’s been a highly entertaining ride, and I’ve learned loads about different models in the space. From managing a mobile wallet for a large telecom in Tanzania to rolling…
An article came out today on Buzzfeed about the Aadhar ID system in India. I’ve been following Aadhar’s development for some time, and am happy to see some skepticism come out around it. There’s no doubt the system, which aims…
One of our staff writes a quarterly round up of the mobile money scene. I thought I’d share it with you this quarter. Always interesting times in this sector… Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) An evident push for industry…
Here’s a brief interview on mobile finance in East Africa by Greta Bull, from Mastercard. It’s a good synopsis of Tanzania, the market that I’ve spent most of my time in, and the characteristics there that led to interoperability. Interoperability…
Here’s a summary from the Communications Authority of Kenya on sector performance and trends on the key segments of mobile telephony and electronic transactions for the financial year 2016/2017 (July – September): Mobile Telephone Subscriptions: 38.5M subscribers, down from 39.7M. A decline of 3.0% from…
I read many articles out there on how mobile finance startups are abusing people’s data and people need to be careful of the startups that are offering mobile finance products. I think this attitude is generally bad for the people…