HiPipo Money

Farmers and generally people living in rural areas have over the years been the most unserved when it comes to access to financial services. This is particularly because they usually don’t have financial records, credit history and business data to back their requests for finances.  

However, technology is changing this as it is allowing thousands to be able to create reliable financial and business records that can be depended on when assessing credit worthiness. Among the platforms making this possible is aXiom Zorn.

“We are a data forensic enterprise. We started this out of the love to help unserved and underserved people be able to access finance and other services. Many banks used to turn away farmers and people from rural areas because they didn’t have data about them; their work, productivity and incomes. So, aXiom came to close this data gap. We use data to produce services that can help the farmers and generally rural people,” Carol Kyazze Kakooza, the Executive Director of aXiom Zorn said.

She noted that for eight years now, aXiom Zorn has been ensuring that farmers and rural people have visible and authentic data that enables them to get different services such as access to finance, insurance, micro-health, and markets.

“We support a wide range of institutional clients, including banks, insurance companies, and agricultural stakeholders. Our company’s database, which includes detailed profiles of over 600,000 households with 326 data points each, forms the backbone of their innovative solutions. Among the banks we have partnered with is one of the biggest banks that works for the people – Centenary Bank. We merged our credit score matrix with Centenary Bank and with this, hundreds of customers have been served,” she explained, adding: 

“After we have rated the customers, we submit the credit scores and Centenary Bank usually extends credit to anybody with a credit score of 50 per cent and above. Those below 50 per cent can also access financial services from other lenders. We also provide a credit limit to the bank so that people are not given money that they have never received and unable to manage.” 

She noted that through the data they collect, they are able to derive several other services including the progress out of poverty credit score, access to finance, access to markets, digital soil map, fertilizer optimization, and insurance.

aXiom Zorn has featured on Day 31 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Access to affordable credit is a big pain point for individuals and businesses alike. Majority that need loans don’t qualify to access them through formal institutions due to institutional red tape and absence of requirements such as collateral and guarantors.  These end up relaying on traditional money lenders who in their nature are exploitative.

Nonetheless, advancement in technology is allowing innovators to develop solutions to address such challenges. One of the most popular financial technology innovations is digital saving and lending platforms. Among those playing in this field is Fido Credit.

Regulated by the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA), Fido Credit offers digital personal loans of up to UGX 1.4 million and digital Business loans of up to UGX 2.5 million.

“Fido is inspired by its customers who are striving to make a difference in their daily lives. Fido is on a mission to empower individuals and entrepreneurs to take charge of their future by providing financial services that are inclusive, instant, and easily accessible through Fido’s innovative digital products. We offer both individual and business loans,” Robert Muhumuza, the deputy CEO of Fido Credit, Uganda said.

He noted that for personal loans, one has to submit his/her know your customer (KYC) details after which they are accessed and a credit score is done, showing how much they can access instantly.

“For personal loans we start from UGX 60,000 to UGX 1.4 million shillings. Once your loan has been approved as per your credit score, it is disbursed and received on your mobile money number with in 5 minutes. A customer can choose to select the 10 days or 30 days repayment period. Interest is charged on a daily basis so the earlier you pay the less interest you pay,” he noted.  

On the other hand, for a business to access a business loan, the business owner must submit the know your business (KYB) details after which a credit score is done and a loan limit assigned.

“For businesses, the proprietor uploads documents that prove ownership of a business. This may include certificate of incorporation and trading license. Business loans are disbursed instantly, so if you have all the documents you are able to get a loan with in 5 minutes. The minimum amount is UGX 400,000 and the maximum for business loans is UGX 2.5 million. The repayment period is still 10 days or 30 days,” he explained.

Robert Muhumuza noted that for the time they have been in Uganda, they have already served over 700,000 customers and disbursed money in billions.

Fido APP has featured on Day 30 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

For start-ups, micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs), proceeds from sales are in many cases immediately injected back in to the operations of the business. Many never have a luxury of having huge capital to keep them running for weeks, in to months like big players are able to.

As such, such businesses always need seamless payment collections platforms that ensure that for whatever sale made, the money is remitted immediately so that to keep the business in good health. While several payment aggregators and enablers promise this, it is a just a few that actually do this. One of the players that is enabling MSMEs effectively collect and make payments is PayTota.

Launched in 2020, Paytota is an all-in-one online payment gateway solution that allows individuals and businesses to make and accept payments from local and international buyers and sellers. To enable this, it has integrated with local and international payment facilitators such as Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) like MTN Mobile Money and Airtel Money, Banks, and Payment Cards Operators like Visa and Mastercard.

According to Erasmus Okurut, the founder and CEO of PayTota, his company is a ground-breaking financial technology company that empowers businesses by providing an inclusive platform that eases their payments in terms of acceptance and also disbursements.

“We are a total payment solution that empowers businesses not only in Uganda but in the entire continent and the global. We have developed and customized a platform that allows any business to be able to accept payments. To enroll with PayTota, you just go to our website and sign up an account. You will then be asked to submit some documents as per the know your customer/business guidelines. Once your documents are received and verified, your account will be activated, integration will be done and you will start accepting payments,” Okurut explained.

He added: “We have also developed hosted pages, commonly know as check outs. A business that wants to accept payments, reaches out to us, we design these pages for you, embed them on your website and you start accepting payments. We accept mobile money and card payments. We regard ourselves as payments aggregators and operators.”

Okurut revealed that they derive the mandate to manage payments from Bank of Uganda as PayTota is fully licensed.

“We are a regulated payment gateway by Bank of Uganda. We have a license as a payment operator for small funds and third-party systems. That license gives us permission to be able to process payments for our partners. That is why over 400 businesses in Uganda and across the World trust us to manage their payments. We have had over 5000 transactions and processed over USD 400,000.”

PayTota has featured on Day 29 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

For Uganda to achieve last mile financial inclusion, there must be special focus on the unserved and underserved. This means that there must be equitable distribution and access to financial services.

Several innovators have developed and rolled out solutions aimed at democratizing savings and borrowing. But more efforts are needed if financial inclusion is to be achieved.

Among the platforms that are enabling people at the bottom of the pyramid to be able to save and access digital credit services is PesaSave.

According to Steven Emalu, the Co-Founder and Team Lead at PesaSave, they started PesaSave to address the challenges faced by those unable to be served by formal financial systems. He noted that around 2022, together with his colleagues, they tried to access credit from a bank, only to be locked out by the much paperwork, business data and lack of collateral accepted by the bank. This inspired them to start a platform that would offer an alternative to the unbanked, unserved and underserved.

“At PesaSave, we build financial technology solutions for the underserved and unbanked populations with a large focus on the Youth. We do this through the PesaSave Application that allows individuals mainly the Youth to create specific targets towards their financial needs and they periodically save towards achieving these goals. The Application is easy to access and use thus its users don’t need to travel to deposit their savings and the platform is transparent thus allowing them to track their savings,” Steven Emalu said.

He added: “We also work with groups of individuals mainly in informal sectors. These join as a group and start saving. Through these savings, they are able to meet their goals and also access credit. We are trying to create an alternative to credit as these unbanked and underserved groups are not able to access credit from formal financial institutions.”

Emalu highlighted that individual saving is open to any adult interested in saving money towards meeting a specific financial goal while group savings are for individuals that come together and agree to save as a group, agree on the saving period and the purpose of the savings.

“Both individuals and groups are able to access affordable credit against their savings. We ensure that when a group saves, individual members are able to access part of these savings as credit at an interest and terms determined by each group. Well as the credit has no collateral, those borrowing must have guarantors. So far, we are serving about 28 groups and over 600 individuals.”

He noted that to execute this work, PesaSave has partnered with licensed operators such as PayTota to support their payments and collections. He revealed that before the end of the year, they will also have a commercial bank partner and thus serve their customers better.

PesaSave has featured on Day 28 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Not a day passes without an event in Uganda. It is either a music, dance and drama show or a themed party, or a sports activity or a professional gathering or cultural gathering, name it.

For all these events, there is one unique problem; the pain involved in accessing tickets. Save for a few events, in most cases, buying tickets and accessing the venues for these events is always a huge mess. This is usually because the tickets are manually sold and physically checked before one can actually attend their event of choice. This old way of doing things comes with so many problems top among them being fraud, theft, commotion and confusion.

That said, all this can be cured by one solution – digitized ticketing systems that allow revelers to book their seats, pay for tickets from wherever they are and turn up on the event day with digital tickets that only need a scan to confirm authenticity before they are let in.

Among the companies that are offering the digitized tickets alternative is Ticket Yo; a start-up that is focused on managing ticketing for events.

“We are an events’ ticketing platform. We are simplifying and streamlining the ticket acquisition process with in the Uganda Entertainment Industry. We help event organizers get their tickets in the easiest and fastest way possible to their target audiences. As an event organizer, you register with us, list your tickets and make them available. We then create for you a dashboard that indicates the numbers of visitors on your link, actually sales and money collected,” John Allan Ojera, the Founder of Ticket Yo said.

He added: “For the customers/revelers, they simply go to our website, choose the event they want to attend and then enter their emails and mobile numbers so that we are able to deliver to them the tickets digitally once they pay. A customer can then pay with either mobile money or bank cards after which they get a confirmation of payment. We then generate a ticket encrypted with security features and a unique QR code which we then share with the customer. This is what the customer presents on the event day.”

Ticket Yo has featured on Day 27 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.

Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.

With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.