Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups working on FinTech solutions. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we want to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising financial inclusion solutions.
Heat Map: 5 Top Financial Inclusion Solutions
Using our StartUs Insights Platform, covering 1.116.000+ startups & emerging companies, we looked at innovation in the field of banking and finance. For this research, we identified 420 relevant solutions and picked 5 to showcase below. These companies were chosen based on a data-driven startup scouting approach, taking into account factors such as location, founding year, and technology among others. Depending on your specific criteria, the top picks might look entirely different.
The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 startups & emerging companies developing innovative financial inclusion solutions. Moreover, the Heat Map reveals regions that observe a high startup activity and illustrates the geographic distribution of all 420 companies we analyzed for this specific topic.
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DFT Empower – Biometric Authentication
Financial inclusion focuses on providing unbanked and underbanked communities with access to formal financial services. This includes various forms of payments, credit, savings, deposits, loans, and insurance products. According to some estimates, more than 1.5 billion people in the world still lack access to financial services. FinTech startups are working on solutions to improve access, as well as usage, of banking and financial services.
The US-based startup DFT Empower supports financial inclusion by providing financial institutions with the biometrically-verified identity of customers. The startup achieves this by using a mobile phone camera to acquire fingerprints and verifies them with national databases. This allows institutions to meet their country’s Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations without requiring the physical presence of any individual.
eFarms – Agriculture-Linked Financing
Financial inclusion is a powerful tool to alleviate poverty and its related issues, so much so that it is one of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. Technology plays a key role as an enabler for bringing more people into formal banking. From a proliferation of automated teller machines (ATMs), online banking, and handheld biometric devices to various point of sale (POS) solutions, emerging companies push underserved communities to make use of finance to enable upward social mobility.
Nigerian startup eFarms develops a digital agricultural and financial model for farmers and agricultural investors. The startup offers potential investors a platform to find the most suitable farms to invest in. The startup then preselects and insures a list of farms during a screening stage. Later, eFarms assess farmers for their experience growing crops and the feasibility parameters of their land. Finally, investors are matched with farms and the farmer’s operation is funded.
Akaboxi – Rural Digital Financial Management
Despite recent accomplishments, formal banking services in Sub-Saharan Africa still cover only roughly 1 in 3 Africans. Startups and emerging companies in the region are working to develop affordable and easy-to-access products to improve the livelihoods of all Africans. Like in any other industry, the requirements for the success of FinTech depends largely on peoples’ participation, in turn, driving companies to streamline basic financial operations, even for remote and rural regions.
Based out of Uganda, Akaboxi is a FinTech startup working on AkaboxiTech, to empower communities to manage and monitor their monetary savings and transactions within their saving groups. The startup’s technology provides a background algorithm that runs a credit scoring model. The cloud-based AkaboxiTech platform additionally provides proper remote monitoring and management of the several saving groups and transactions.
Teknospire – Last-Mile Digital Financial Services
Policymakers around the world are facing increasing pressure to develop strong legislation to spur local development. Additional provisions for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), in particular, are essential for achieving policy targets. Local innovation and development are also dependent on access to affordable and secure banking services. This encourages startups to develop targeted financial products to actively include SMEs in development efforts.
Indian startup Teknospire builds FinX Inclusive Banking, an integrated last-mile cloud-based banking platform that assists banks and non-banking financial corporations (NBFCs). The startup’s scalable technology platform offers financial institutions the opportunity to engage with rural and remote communities to further extend basic banking services.
InfoCorp – Livestock-Backed Financial Services
Financial inclusion also benefits bigger banks and even the government as a whole. From job creation and economic stability to expanding banking services to a wider population, access to affordable finance brings with it numerous benefits. Further integration between traditional banking and emerging FinTech solutions has the potential to improve the lives of underdeveloped communities across the globe.
Singapore-based startup InfoCorp offers FarmTrek, a blockchain-based financial platform that accepts livestock as collateral. The startup’s livestock-as-an-asset model further allows smaller farmers to maximize the benefits of rearing livestock. FarmTrek looks to improve access to banking products for women and SMEs in many countries. InfoCorp also develops Sentinel Chain to enable blockchain-based cross-border livestock-backed services for other livestock-based financial institutions.
What About The Other 415 Solutions?
While we believe data is key to creating insights it can be easy to be overwhelmed by it. Our ambition is to create a comprehensive overview and provide actionable innovation intelligence so you can achieve your goals faster. The 5 financial inclusion solutions showcased above are promising examples out of 420 we analyzed for this article. To identify the most relevant solutions based on your specific criteria, get in touch.
