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Women Leadership in a FinTech Company is Vital for developing systems for women – Mojaloop PI-10 Session Poll

Thank you to everyone who  took time to complete our poll during our Mojaloop PI-10 session on Hack-a-thon Update presentation.

Results for a poll that was run poll during the Mojaloop PI-10 community session on Hack-a-thon and responded to by 32 FinTech, Financial Inclusion and Business experts from more 15 countries around the globe revealed that Women leadership in FinTech companies plays a major role in developing financial systems for women.

The questions was: 

Do you think prioritizing women leadership for a FinTech company has a positive effect on developing products and systems that best serve women’s needs?

  1. Yes
  2. No

Eighty Five percent (83%) of the respondent were male whereas 17 percent were female.

88% answered yes and 12 percent said no.

Below is chart showing results of the findings.

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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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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 

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Include Everyone to spearhead Mojaloop adoption outreach engagements – Remarks of Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo

In all Africa countries that have adopted digital financial services, Digital and mobile technologies make it possible to reach new customers with innovative, low-cost financial services. While this interconnection is feasible, the lack of a shared platform connecting all financial services players, means that financial providers have to build everything on their own which this raises costs.

Mojaloop as an open-source software for creating digital payments platforms that connect all customers, merchants, banks, and other financial providers in a country’s economy will make it cheaper for interoperability realization in all markets.

Being opensource, mojaloop is expected to grow robust and stable with community contributions while  financial services players use the open-source software to help build digital, interoperable payments platforms that drive financial inclusion on a national, regional and continental scales.

Majoolop based platforms will enable seamless, low-cost transactions between individual users, merchants, banks, providers, and even government offices – helping connect poor customers with everyone else in the digital economy.

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.

As part of our Include Everyone Program and as contributors in the open source community. HiPipo will spearhead outreach programs to popularize Mojaloop and promote its adoption at different national levels. Innocent Kayoowa CEO of HiPipo noted that unless individuals, fintechs and all concerned parties on the African continent take on the challenge and mantle of promoting practical projects and product such as Mojaloop that promote interoperability, the cost of financial services will remain on the higher side hindering many of the poor to actively participate and be financially included.

 

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Mojaloop for National, Regional and International Interoperability – Remarks of Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo

Mojaloop is open-source software for building interoperable digital payments platforms on a national, regional and international scale.  Talk of payments and money transfers between Uganda and Kenya or Tanzania and Nigeria or Benin and Zambia.  At a national scale, it could be payments and money transfers between all banks in the country and mobile money operators in the same country. These kinds of transactions will easily be facilitated by mojaloop.  Mojaloop makes it easier and more affordable for different kinds of providers to link up their services and deploy low-cost financial services in new markets. Innocent Kawooya CEO HiPipo notes that in order to Include Everyone, we believe that software products and platforms such as mojaloop should be embraced since they will deliver more cost efficient interoperability.

Mojaloop development was funded by The Gates Foundation and is progressed and promoted by the Open Source Community. HiPipo under our Include Everyone Program support and promote the adoption of this software in the Open Source Community to facilitate financial inclusion.