With 2 billion people unbanked, mobile apps can fill the void, writes Ken Fireman
For Mary Tonkei and Stephen Wainaina Waweru, and a lot of other people in the developing world, the fintech revolution is much more than a matter of convenience. It’s changing their way of life. Tonkei, a Maasai dairy farmer in Kenya, is able to run her entire business through her phone. Using a popular payment app, she pays her employees, sells her milk, and even borrows money to buy more cows. Waweru, who raises pigs on a farm outside Nairobi, needed to buy a solar-powered light to replace a kerosene lamp that gave off toxic fumes and was a fire hazard. He used a payment app to make the purchase.
The changes wrought by technology-intensive financial startups have altered the way people across the globe borrow funds, pay for purchases, manage wealth and move money around. Fintech represents a frontal challenge to the traditional banking industry, one that the big dogs of the business are taking seriously and trying to co-opt, writes freelance correspondent Victoria Finkle in her report for SAGE Business Researcher.