PayPal has agreed to acquire Swift Financial, a leading provider of working capital solutions to small businesses in the U.S. Headquartered in Wilmington, Del., Swift Financial was established in 2006 to provide funding in order to support businesses. Since then, Swift has provided funding to thousands of growing companies in the U.S.

PwC and Startupbootcamp are stationed at the heart of the FinTech ecosystem in India. Startupbootcamp scouts for and supports promising, early-stage startups in the country, while PwC advises a wide-range of corporate and institutional clients on leading FinTech issues. For its first program in India, Startupbootcamp FinTech analysed more than 1000 startups from across the world.

The aggregate increase in per capita income of a country does not necessarily ensure poverty reduction, particularly in a developing economy like Bangladesh.

According to the World Bank data, the per capita income in the Dominican Republic between 2000 and 2010 increased 3.62 percent and the poverty indices rose 2.07 percent. In Egypt, the per capita income rose 2.84 percent and the poverty indices increased 3.81 percent in the same period.

The majority of SME applications for credit are successful. In fact, close to 80 percent of all requests are approved. However, higher rates of growth can be achieved by helping those SMEs which have not been successful understand better what they can do to obtain financing. The EBF actively supports the initiative of strengthening feedback provided to SMEs when their credit applications are not successful, especially in countries were national initiatives to facilitate this dialogue have not yet been fully developed.

Unrealised growth potential and positive demographics continue to make Africa an attractive long-term investment destination, despite the SME funding gap. Africa has 400 companies with more than $1bn in revenue and 700 companies with more than $500m in revenue. Over the past five years, debt transactions totalling $110.2bn have been placed in African debt markets or by African companies on international markets, the majority of which were US dollar-denominated.

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago jointly publish the 2017 Americas Alternative Finance Industry Report. The study shows the online alternative finance market continued to grow in the United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean in 2016 to reach $35.2 billion. The report is supported by CME Group Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank.