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DFS, the ‘New Normal’ of Financial Services

From crisis comes innovation and opportunity. #COVID19 situation is no different. The ‘new normal’ in financial services will be an increasingly digital one and it is up to the incumbents to finally invest in this. We may finally see ‘real’ digital transformation and achieve full financial inclusion. Digital Financial Services will from now and going forward be key to any form of transaction.

HiPipo is keen to promote secure digital financial services because of their vital role in promoting financial inclusion.

It is time for advocates, MNOs, Banks, FinTechs, developers and everyone keen to promote financial inclusion to think interoperability, think internet of money and think of the most affordable ways to ensure everyone can have access to digital financial services.

For instance expansion of choices and creating platforms that strengthen the voices for women and girls in the financial inclusion arena might become the most profitable investment that benefits everyone now and for the future. Think about it!

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International Women’s Day: Let us empower women with financial inclusion.

Women in FinTech Hackathon

On one of our HiPipo Foundation travels, we took some time to read about the most influential people of 2019.  We were touched by the story of a lady from South Africa who has committed her life to support gender violence victims majority of which are women.

Across Africa and in several parts of the world, violence against women and children is one of society atrocities that has hampered deeper financial inclusion, education and health access.   Women and Children under violent households and communities will be denied owning a phone later on have a mobile money account in their possession and control so as to save money and transact.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, at HiPipo Foundation we echo the message of many across the world, to rally together and stop violence against women and children. Plus we urge all communities to support initiates that are aimed at empowering women with financial inclusion.

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More Collaboration Will Foster Digital Financial Services Security

Trust of the financial eco system is central to mass adoption and deepening financial inclusion. Concerns of fraud and loss of customers` funds more so funds for the poor can lead to deep hesitation to use digital financial platforms and tools.

Mobile money has largely been delivered with more traditionally secure telecom channels such as USSD and STK. While these have their know vulnerabilities, their technical exploitation has been less perpetrated but a lot of social engineering through communication and persuasion of unsuspecting customers to share PIN, OTP and send money to fraudsters has been a very regular occurrence in the leading mobile money markets.

The era of interoperability fueled by leading platforms such as Majoloop will potentially increase the scale of possibility to fraud with fraudsters on one network targeting those on another network or bank to transfer funds over the interoperable Majoloop powered switch.

As thus, the industry stakeholders and players including telecoms, banks and regulators that handle KYC, need to collaborate more to share information of sim card centered frauds that fuel mobile social engineering fraud.

HiPipo Foundation Include Everyone program will take extra effort in our research, education and advocacy campaigns to ensure stakeholders appreciate the increased scale of social engineering fraud and collectively collaborate for information sharing.  This will also supplement efforts to combat AML and CFT.

Another dimension of growing risk is increased transactions over new generation digital channels i.e Apps, Web and social banking. Cybercrime that was initially Internet IP centric will hence forth increase as we see channel advances. Similarly, effort from tech and regulatory fronts will have to be boosted to hasten cyber protection of unsuspecting and naive consumers of which majority would likely be the poor, women and youth that a newly banking or semi banking citizens.

Join HiPipo Foundation during the Include Everyone advocacy events series to discuss these issues and provide best practice recommendation to addresses these financial inclusion challenges.

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Mojaloop Phase 4 Convening – Johannesburg, South Africa

HiPipo Foundation Include Everyone Team Attend Mojaloop Phase 4 Convening – Johannesburg, South Africa

HiPipo Foundation Include Everyone Team, were privileged to participate in the Mojaloop Phase 4 convening that was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, between 27 to 30 January 2020.

The convening had 115 attendees from 23 countries confirming its stable growth and setting new record.

Among several presentations, HiPipo Foundation Include Everyone team presented results from the #HackMojaloop and Summit that was held in Kampala during Q4 of 2019.

The convening event attendees performed over 142 ATM transactions and 80 POS transactions in a proof of concept demonstration of the software capabilities.

 

This further brings to light Mojaloop readiness for commercial adoption. Plus, with projects such as Mowali and TIPS planned to commercially go live soon, we are seeing the interoperability revolution start to materialize.

 

From a technology perspective, much has been achieved and more is on the roadmap for Mojaloop improvement as the default interoperability software platform. Performance, fraud management, settlement, cross currency, versioning, security are among the domains that were earmarked for improvement in the next Program Increment.


HiPipo Foundation Include Everyone team thank and greatly appreciate all the participants and community contributors including Modusbox, Crosslake, and The Level One Project for steering the project to the current achievement. We are looking forward to the next convening in Zanzibar.

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Include Everyone Summit

*Digital Impact Awards Africa* will be featured under  the *Include Everyone Summit* 

The program constitutes

  1. Interoperability and Open APIs Hackathon,
  2. Include Everyone Summit ,
  3. Digital Impact Awards Africa.

This will bring together different digital and financial inclusion  stakeholders from across Africa. The project will discover and promote products and services plus innovations which are of strategic importance for Africa’s drive to effectively reap maximum digital dividend that will catalyze Africa’s development.

Given the strategic importance of digital inclusion and financial inclusion in Africa, we call upon all players in the different economic sector industries that embrace digital in their businesses, plus those that provide or use financial services to participate.

Find out More

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Open APIs will Advance Digital Saving and Loans Innovations. Remarks of Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo

Digital Saving and Loans is offering quick small loans/saving remotely over digital channels such as for  M-Shwari in Kenya, Mokash and Wewole in Uganda.  Digital saving and loans can benefit borrowers as an alternative to informal lending sources to meet emergency liquidity needs of poor households and provide a first step into formal financial services.  In promoting financial services for the poor, banking and telecom organization should enable digital driven means for developing saving culture which would spur better and less risk lending trends and decisions.   P2P lending, SACCO lending can all be digitized if small Fintechs and developers are given the right tools and APIs to integrate into the financial platform of big Telecoms and banks. The data available already for customer GSM and Mobile Money transactions is a starting ground to help in offering well-tailored products to key segments of the poor, youth and women that we need to be more included in formal financial services.

“Open APIs will Advance Digital Saving and Loans Innovations. Under Include Everyone program, we believe that the more we promote OPEN API for identify (KYC), Data and Transaction use cases, the more we shall propel innovation to delivered financial services for the poor” remarks Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo.

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Open API and Mojaloop are key to improve Financial Services for the Poor. – Remarks of Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo

An application programming interface (API) “is an architecture that makes it easy for one application to ‘consume’ capabilities or data from another application” (Apigee). It is a protocol that allows software programs to “talk” to one another, defining what information should be supplied and what actions will be taken when it is executed. A common example is Uber’s use of Google Maps.

APIs are important to financial inclusion because they connect third-parties to established payments platforms e.g for M-PESA or MTN MOMO to deliver innovative services that address the needs of many customers.   Many operators including Safaricom, Airtel, Vodacom/Vodafone, Orange, MTN have started initiative to avail their API over the web in what would be called an OPEN API approach. This approach will make it easier for different innovator to integrate to these renown telcom platforms and easily have their financial service for the poor innovations realized.

To go a level higher, Mojaloop which is widely thought and planned to be the potential and ultimate enabler for interoperability avails an open API that any stakeholder integrating into a mojaloop switch will easily have access to.

Innocent Kawooya CEO of HiPipo notes that under our Include Everyone program, We believe that open API, GSMA API and Mojaloop will be key to improve Financial Services for the Poor given the wide scale innovation that they would enable for small, medium and large enterprises and fintechs that are looking to contribute to Financial Inclusion.

Mojaloop grew out of principles set forth by the Financial Services for the Poor team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With support and funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mojaloop was designed by a team of leading tech and fintech companies: Ripple, Dwolla, ModusBox, Software Group and Crosslake Technologies