Learning Goals

• Deconstruction of supply chain finance journey and key considerations
• Opportunities to apply technology to benefit serving MSMEs
• Factors for financial institutions to anticipate when introducing SCF for MSMEs

Scott Stefanski has dedicated much of his 22-year career as a business and technology strategist, to the pursuit of solutions at the nexus of financial services and digital disruption. This work began with early efforts to introduce mobile technology to emerging markets before addressing issues around bank access, co-creating an early mobile wallet solution and serving as first employee for Ultralight Banking (later branded Obopay). He later focused on merchant challenges and designed solutions to embrace interpersonal transaction behaviors, founding Maana Mobile for the South African market. Most recently, Scott has expanded his work to address financial needs throughout supply chains, investigating and modeling opportunities to digitize supply chain management and finance practices for the benefit of a broader set of suppliers and merchants. Along the way, Scott has advised multilateral institutions, foundations and private sector clients in fields of innovation practices, product design, rapid prototyping, business and financial modeling, advising on investments, and interpreting technological trends to define future facing strategies to better meet the needs of the financially excluded. His efforts have included rapid prototyping consumer instant credit products in Senegal, user-centered product design of a person-to-person digital marketplace in Ghana, and designing and initiating a supply chain management and finance platform for the Tanzanian market. He has conducted market assessments across several African and Asian markets for digital financial services, and worked with mobile operators and banks in multiple African and Asian markets to modernize their product development practices to enable more rapid innovation.