The Africa SME Finance Forum 2018 will examine the key challenges faced by MSMEs in Africa, and explore innovative local and global best practice solutions to promote youth entrepreneurship and enhance access to financing for MSMEs. The conference will focus on how Africa is harnessing digital technology to disrupt traditional banking industry and to create new banking infrastructure to fill gaps where there has been a lack of access to financial services.
Since the start of 2006, three venture capital firms—500 Startups, NEA and Golden Seeds—have closed more than 100 deals apiece backing female-founded companies in the US. Twenty-five investors have closed more than 50 deals each.
As a follow-up to PitchBook's recent content on women in VC, including their interactive map of investment in female-founded companies and articles on whether female founders get better results and closing the gender funding gap, they have highlighted the investors who have most actively funded companies with at least one woman founder.
Lav Odorovic is the co-founder and CEO of Penta. Odorovic is a serial entrepreneur, having set up and exited his first startup by the tender age of 21. After working several corporate jobs, he, together with several entrepreneurial friends, launched Penta, a Berlin-based neobank, offering banking services to early-stage technology companies.
Eugene Danilkis, CEO and Co-Founder of Mambu (a member of the SME Finance Forum) shares with Medium how he built this fintech company. Danikis talks about his background and how it led to founding Mambu, and what the company offers. He says, "That’s what differentiates us — through our platform clients can design and launch products themselves quickly, scale easily and do it with a small team.
Mastercard jointly announced with Governor Andrew Cuomo that it will add to its New York state operations with the expansion of its New York City Technology Hub. The company will relocate its current tech hub operations to a new Flatiron location at 150 Fifth Avenue and nearly triple its work force through the creation of over 470 new jobs by 2024. The Mastercard technology hub, located in the Flatiron district, is home to members of the company's digital product, operations technology, Masterpass, and research & development teams.
Keri Gohman, the President of Xero Americas spoke to the role of collaborative work in the financial services industry, and why small business banking in the U.S. required stronger ties between the tech and banking community to rewire small-business economy. In Gohman’s current role, she leads team of individuals focused on transforming financial management for small-business owners and accountants across the Americas.
A joint report from the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion and the Institute of International Finance provides insight from SME Finance Forum members and friends, including MasterCard, ICICI Bank, Bancolombia, and BBVA Bancomer.
SME Finance Forum member Ripple has unveiled a new name for its global payments network and new solutions. RippleNet, the global payments network, has more than 90 customers and is undergoing more than 75 commercial deployments. The network’s digital asset, XRP, was listed by five new exchanges in the second quarter of this year, which resulted in $11.06 billion worth of XRP transactions. By the end of the second quarter, XRP had risen by 11.6x from the previous quarter and by 39.8x year-to-date.
An exclusive opportunity for members, the SME Finance Forum’s study visits are an integral part of our peer learning opportunities. Whether members are looking to expand their SME lending, in the nascent stage of their SME lending, or just thinking about starting SME lending, the study visits offer the opportunity to learn best practices from highly respected peers.
Since Amazon Lending began in 2011, it has surpassed $3 billion in loans to small businesses. Recently, the company announced that it has surpassed $1 billion in small-business loans to more than 20,000 merchants involved in its Amazon Marketplace in the U.S. UK, and Japan during the past year. In fact, Amazon is making money from both the sales of products via its online platform and by charging interest on the loans.
