SC Ventures partners with Yabx to expand access to financial services in Africa
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‘Purpose-driven loans’ centered around inclusion, education, skills development and gender are the main products being developed for African markets
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This collaborative partnership leverages the expertise and global best practices of the financial industry with the disruption and agility of a fintech to address the need for responsible consumer finance in Africa.
LONDON, 13 February 2023 /PRNewswire/ — SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment and venture arm has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Yabx, a company incubated by Comviva and part of the Mahindra Group, to address a deep-seated need for responsible consumer finance i Africa.
Africa have over 700 million mobile wallets and around 450 million bank accounts, but access to formal credit remains severely limited due to poor credit infrastructure and the slowly evolving risk appetite of financial services players, especially traditional banks. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitization in the financial sector and created a fertile environment for new and disruptive products to be brought to market. The partnership between SC Ventures and Yabx takes advantage of this to create unique, Africa– specific products that will increase access to credit to sub-banks across the board Africa.
Agile future-ready technology, data analytics combined with a deep understanding of banking will reduce the cost of delivering innovative credit products, thereby expanding inclusion across underserved segments in Africa where it is most needed. Given the scale and complexity of the opportunity, SC Ventures and Yabx have taken a collaborative approach to jointly address the challenge. Loans will be provided to customers for specific purposes such as education and skills development using an innovative data-driven scoring and analysis engine built with rich experience from African markets. These loan products will initially be launched in Uganda and then expanded to other countries i Africa.
Jiten Aroramember SC Ventures so, “We are excited about the opportunity to use a data-driven, technology-enabled partnership model to serve underbanks through purpose-driven lending in Africaa continent for which we have a deep understanding and a strong commitment.“
Manoranjan MohapatraCEO of Comviva, commented, “Yabx has seen exponential growth over the past year and we will continue to invest in the mission to serve millions of consumers and MSMEs in emerging markets that have limited traditional sources of funding available to them.“
Rajat DayalCEO of Yabxso, “We have a lot of synergy with SC Ventures i Africa and together we are uniquely positioned to create a seamless embedded financial experience. This partnership bridges the gaps in the current market, drives digital innovations and delivers significant benefits to the underserved population of Africa.
SC Ventures
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About Yabx
Yabx, a Fintech headquarters in The Netherlands aims to facilitate financial access to New to Credit (NTC) and Thin-file customers and MSMEs in the emerging markets of Asia, Africa & Latin America. Yabx operates in over 20+ markets worldwide and has achieved over 100+ million customers.
The company has been recognized as “Best BNPL Platform” at the Global Fintech Fest 2022 and has also won the title of “Lendtech of the Year” at the Asia Fintech Awards 2022. Yabx was chosen to solve the savings gap problem in Solomon Islands of several players competing at the UNCDF Pacific Island Fintech Innovation Challenge’22, while also being one of the finalists at the MWC Barcelona and GSMA Glomo Awards’23 for being the most innovative fintech platform.
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