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Supporting SMEs in Africa through Innovative Payment Solution, Fintech Banking and Data Management
The SME Finance Forum, since its inception in 2015, has been featuring innovative fintechs, helping to connect its members to different technologies and partnership opportunities. Through our virtual SME marketplace, we offer, in particular, a monthly pitch session.
The SME virtual marketplace is a unique online match-making platform promoting partnership and collaboration among financial institutions, fintech companies, and DFI. On May 4th, the SME Finance Forum Marketplace live session gathered eight fintech companies offering services from e-lending, public and private rating services, trade finance, capacity building, payment solution, blended finance, blockchain and humanitarian and financial inclusion services.
Read below a summary of their presentation.
Empowering African entrepreneurs with financial unsecured business loans for enterprise growth
Wayne Hennessy-Barrett, Founder of 4G Capital, presented how 4G Capital has supported micro and small enterprises in Africa since 2013 by providing financial literacy training blended with working capital loans to help them grow sustainably. The company is currently operating in Kenya and Uganda, but plans to expand in Ghana, Nigeria, and Egypt. 4GC has positively impacted over one million people to date, with a goal to reach out to 100 million people by 2030. 4GC believes that without access to capital and knowledge to use it wisely, many businesses are at risk which puts family and communities under pressure and holds some African countries from reaching their potential. The award-winning neobank for Africa also partners with distributors so the clients can increase sales, improve revenues, loyalty, and retention.
Capacity-building for middle and senior level management for better leadership skills
Maxine McKenzie-Kellie, Head of People Partnerships of Access Holding, explained that their mission is to engage people and empower talent. The Access Learning Development Program is a capacity-building program for middle and senior level management. The curriculum of the program consists of leadership skills and core competence skills. To measure the success of the program, Access Holding will conduct after-training feedback, assessment test, coaching training sessions and measure graduate promotion rate.
Enabling faster payments for financial institutions and corporates
Jon Levine, Co-Head of Institutional Banking of Banking Circle presented how Banking Circle has helped companies process payments faster, deliver fair payments, and empower financial institutions to not worry about blocks of payments. Banking Circle believes that poor quality service by banking partners and slow payment speed will result in de-risking by their correspondent banking partner. They process around 10 million payments per month.
Managing financial risk in low and middle-income countries
Chriss Clubb, Managing Director Europe of Convergence Blended Finance explained that Convergence blends finance data, intelligence, and deal flow to increase private sector investment in developing countries. The biggest issue in low and middle-income countries is risk. Blended finance helps companies reduce that risk and access a market-efficient line to increase their return. The blended finance market has worked with sectors such as energy, financial services, and agriculture to make the financial flows. Convergence and partners also endeavor to increase the quantity and quality of finance to support implementation of SDGs and climate projects.
Funding the excluded target groups in Nigeria
Bonaventure Okhaimo, the Chief Operating Officer at Development Bank of Nigeria shared that the vision of DBN is to be Nigeria’s primary development finance institution and to promote growth and sustainability. DBN works with several funding partners who have provided debt funding for its wholesale banking. DBN also focuses on target groups who are financially excluded such as women, youth, and disadvantaged regions.
Get Bid Bonds at your convenience
Hassan Issa, the Product Manager at TradePawa, Fintech Group presented how TradePawa provides a convenient, reliable, and affordable link among parties in trade finance. A bid bond is issued as part of tendering process by the supplier/contractor to the project owner, to provide a guarantee that the winning bidder will carry out the contract under the terms at which they bid. The process starts from registering and applying for a bid bond and getting the bid bond verified and approved. It is then submitted with other tender documents, and lastly, authenticity is checked by procuring identity.
Bringing trust, privacy and security of digital identity to your companies
Li Ge, the Business Development Manager at Ontology explained the importance of bringing trust, privacy and security to Web3 through decentralized identity and data solutions. Their solution is designed to give users and enterprises the flexibility to build blockchain-based solutions that suit their needs. It includes products such as Ont ID (data protection through encryption), ONTO Wallet (digital identity management all in one cross-chain wallet), Wing Finance (cross-chain DeFi lending protocol integrated with a reputation score) and SAGA (decentralized data protocol).
Innovative payments solution for SMMEs in South Africa
Tysys Capital Group is a global payments company with innovative payment solutions. Modise Motloba, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tysys Capital Group explained that Tysys designs, develops, implements, and manages the ESD Program on behalf of its clients. Within that program, there are more than 320 small medium and micro enterprises screened for loans, grants, and non-financial support in South Africa.
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If you want to learn more about these fintech, listen to the recording of the marketplace session HERE
Speakers’ presentations are also available HERE
We also encourage you to get in touch with them to make inquiries and explore partnership opportunities on our Virtual Marketplace which is open 24/7/365.
If you missed previous marketplace sessions, visit this link> to listen to the recordings and read the write-ups of all our live sessions since April 2021.
