I saw a really interesting presentation in Kigali at the Dot Finance Africa FinTech Summit from Yasaman Hadjibashi, Chief Creation Officer with Barclays Africa (soon to be something else). She began with a discussion of the make-up of Africa: By 2050, it is expected that the population will double from 1.2 billion today to 2.4 billion…
Expanding on yesterday’s discussion of how MNOs are sweeping up business for the underbanked and unbanked, Igor Pesin of Life.SREDA posted a lovely update giving even more detail. Here is how he saw things … Fintech in Rwanda: the place where Telcos are surpassing Banks in the financial sector Telcos dominate in the financial sector…
I often think we need a reality check when it comes to digital finance. Many of the pundit analysts and influencers out there believe no one needs a branch visit and that everything can be done remotely on devices. I don’t. I’ve mentioned this many times and, psychologically, customers need the reassurance that they can…
I picked up Bloomberg Business Week at the airport this week, attracted by the cover. Wal-Mart have issues with the digital revolution. Amazon is stealing their lunch, literally, and they’ve been struggling for years to work out what to do about it. As a giant gorilla of grocery stores, the story of Wal-Mart’s challenges reminded me…
I’ve just spent the last three weeks travelling around too many places to mention, including Germany, UAE, UK and three very different countries: Argentina, Colombia and Pakistan. Argentina is a huge and diverse country of over a million square miles, and a population of 40 million; Colombia is one of the world’s most ecologically diverse…
I’ve blogged about how I see leadership in the developing (developed now) economies of China and India, and the new innovation models of emerging economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, but not quite in the way in which I see them now. The more I think about it, we have three major FinTech models, each with their…
I’ve just returned from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where there were a number of events. Just a few weeks ago, I was in Bahrain, talking at a conference about FinTech as usual. What struck me is the interest and excitement about FinTech in both countries. There’s also a lot of competition between different cities…
I recently was hauled up over saying that Western Union (WU) was being disrupted by FinTech. The words that a reader took issue with are: The high fees of Western Union and other remittance providers were fairly punishing … until FinTech came along Western Union is being disrupted, to an extent, but this person was…
I’ve been working closely with BKM, the Turkish retail payments clearing company, for a few years now. They manage the Fintech Istanbul program, and are the powerhouse behind many of the innovations we’ve seen in Turkey from mobile wallets to contactless payments. Their CEO, Soner Canko, will be presenting to the Financial Services Club on…
