September 19, 2024 Germany’s Cash Culture: Entrenched, But Evolving In Germany, the winds of digitization are blowing, though they may be more swirling than a concentrated gust.
August 07, 2024 Argentina: Can Bank-Driven Wallets Compete With Big Tech Platforms? Following the pandemic, a certain playbook for revamping digital payment ecosystems has emerged across geographies. This often involves
July 17, 2024 Can Digital Monitoring Unlock Climate Finance? Last year, Mondato partnered with the GSMA to map the landscape of innovative finance instruments targeting improved delivery
June 05, 2024 Betting on Chaos: Africa’s Thriving Online Gambling Industry For 36-year-old Zimbabwean Charles Mpeni, a former civil servant and gambling addict, betting on horses was a harmless
May 08, 2024 Brazil and India Usher In The Open Finance Era It took a few years of discussions, proposals and frustrations for open banking to become an actual, concrete
April 10, 2024 Fintech And The Era of Digital Public Infrastructure When Anit Mukherjee arrived in Washington, DC in 2013, a friend suggested ordering something called Uber to pick
March 06, 2024 Open Banking in Nigeria: Are Grassroots Efforts Enough? After several years of slow progress, some of the earliest examples of open banking frameworks have begun to
February 07, 2024 Gen AI In Emerging Markets: Is The Hype Warranted? In an otherwise difficult funding environment, slapping “AI’ onto any product or service has become shorthand for “we’
January 10, 2024 Three Fintech Trends From 2023 — And How They May Look In 2024 In 2023, the dichotomy between success and failure in the fintech world never felt more stark. Emerging technologies
November 15, 2023 Psychometrics: What Makes A Reliable Borrower? With various forms of data proving insufficient or invasive (or both), the quest for privacy-protective — yet repayment-predictive — data
July 26, 2023 Inclusion Through Gig Work: A Tricky Venture The idea to utilize gig work for financial inclusion purposes is obvious, yet its manifestation is elusive. The
July 12, 2023 Bridging The Access-Usage Gap, Literacy Efforts Aren’t Key — Addressing Need Is Even following COVID’s turbocharge of digital uptake, the slower gains in usage compared to access renders financial
June 14, 2023 South Africa: A Model Of Stability Or Stymied Innovation? Fintech in South Africa is one of many caveats. A country with a highly banked population — yet one
May 31, 2023 Small Scale Series: Island Hopping Across the Caribbean Approximately 45 million people spread out over 7,000 islands, 13 independent countries, 20 territories, six official languages,
May 17, 2023 Post-SVB: Are Emerging Markets Digital Banks’ Oasis? As funding goes dry and rising interest rates threaten some fintechs predicated on cheap money, the recent collapse
April 19, 2023 Small Scale Series: Tiny Markets in West Africa When it comes to fintech, scale sells. Any start-up seeking sustainability requires a measure of scale in a
April 05, 2023 Regulation: Time to Ask for Permission And Not Forgiveness The common saying “ask for forgiveness and not permission” has never been more contentious than it is in
March 01, 2023 Are Colleges Failing At Blockchain? Surf the internet, and you’ll find countless Twitter wars and Op-Eds about blockchain and cryptocurrencies, especially following
February 01, 2023 Cross-Border Integration and The Future of Frictionless Finance As 2023 gets underway, it is still not clear whether the shots of digitization induced by the pandemic
January 25, 2023 Africa’s Social Commerce Runners: Raising The Floor, But Lowering The Ceiling? Social commerce is making inroads across Africa, propelled by stronger cross-border trade corridors that are helping to plug
December 28, 2022 Fintech 2023: Looking Back To Look Forward In the first two years of the COVID pandemic, “acceleration” was the overused buzzword for what lockdowns and
December 14, 2022 FTX Aftershocks: Creation Through Destruction? Weeks after FTX’s monumental collapse, the aftershocks continue as investors, regulators and companies take stock of what
December 07, 2022 Regulation: The Secret Ingredient To Uganda’s Fintech Sauce? The East African country of Uganda has historically played second or third fiddle to fintech giants Kenya to
November 01, 2022 The New Rules And Norms Shaping Alternative Data 2.0 The first wave of alternative data use gave rise to powerhouse companies across key markets in the African