Grace Ashiru
SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment, and ventures arm, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Yabx. This Netherlands-based fintech aims to make it easier for MSMe in emerging markets to access financial services and ensure that everyone in Africa has access to financial services.
Even though there are more than 700 million mobile wallets and about 450 million bank accounts in Africa, access to formal credit is still very limited due to a lack of credit infrastructure and the slow rate at which financial service providers, especially traditional banks, are becoming more willing to take risks.
SC Ventures and Yabx are working together to help underserved parts of Africa where it is most needed. They will do this using an innovative data-driven scoring and analytics engine built with a lot of experience in African markets. Customers would be given loans for specified goals such as education and skill development.
According to a statement made available to Techloy, these loan products would be introduced in Uganda first before being extended to other African nations.
