HiPipo Money

Those that have used local buses, and taxis will tell you that most payments are done in cash; with passengers usually paying for a full trip fare regardless of your drop off point.

It is such rigidities that YendaRide seeks to address in Zambia, through a digital platform that allows passengers to pay fares that are in sync with distance travelled.

“Our platform is a post-paid e-ticketing payment system that makes it easy for passengers to pay bus fares seamless. The genesis of this platform is that I identified a problem in the way passengers traditionally pay for bus fares on local routes. In a typical bus situation, a passenger pays with cash, expects change and even when the authorities come up with a standard bus fare, the operators don’t follow it. At the end, passengers are overcharged, and some time lose their balance. This affects bus owners too,” Colins Mulenga Nonde, Founder and CEO YendaRide said, adding:

“It is this mess that we seek to address. This is an electronic platform that calculates and allows you to pay the exact fare for your trip. The idea is that you should pay for the distance covered, not round payment or full fare even when you dropping off half way the trip. Our platform has come to ensure that customers don’t make such losses.”

Mulenga noted that YendaRide is an APP based platform, currently downloadable on the Google Play store.

“Once you download it on Google Play, you register and link the platform to your mobile money or bank account to enable you deposit and recharge the account. After this set up, you are able to start initiating trips and the platform will give you a QR code which is scanned by a conductor using a point of sale machine after which you are allowed to board. Bus owners are registered with us and issued with point of sale machines that they use to scan the tickets. Through the point of sale machines, the bus operators are able to see and monitor all transactions.”

He nonetheless noted that while this platform is exciting, the town council authorities are skeptical and less knowledgeable about such innovations thus ‘resistance to adopt’.

Mulenga applauded the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative for ‘encouraging Zambian FinTechs to take a lead in ensuring that more people are included in the digital payments ecosystem plus ensuring that payment systems are at the center stage of driving innovations.’

YendaRide featured on Day 27 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide. The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.

Robust365 is contributing to Zambia’s Digital and Financial Inclusion through empowering micro, small and medium sized enterprises (MSMEs) to take control of their finances, make data driven decisions and achieve their business growth.

The tool allows small businesses to manage their finances, track quotations, invoices, income and expenses among other things. Its latest addition is a payment functionality.

“The financial technology solution we have created helps small businesses to manage their finances. Our system not only helps businesses manage finances but also allows payments. When our users send invoices, they directly receive payments on to their wallets,” Fredrick Alban, co-founder and CTO of Robust365.

Alban noted that while they started the development of their software in 2019, it at some point crushed and had to be redeveloped to meet the needs of the market.

“There are over 500 businesses using our platform. The main challenge we are facing is the fact that most small businesses have no records of their finances and are hesitant to migrate to digital. These, we are reaching out to and educating them to understand why they should digitize their business.”

He further revealed that low funding, limited technical skills and expertise are key barriers to Zambia and broadly Africa’s digitization and financial inclusion.

“Our market lacks technical knowledge. You find for example, we are failing to integrate the Mojaloop API on to our systems. It is not just about finances but more about the technical competence. We need to have the right technology and developers to build our FinTechs and boost our systems.”

Alban applauded the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative noting that “if it continues to operate over years, many start-ups which are still lagging behind will get a lot of achievements.”

Robust365 was featured on Day 26 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.

ValueFin is supporting micro, small and medium sized businesses in Zambia to scale and reach higher heights through connecting them to ready markets, and providing patient credit.

This according to Mukuka Bwalya, a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ValueFin Limited is part of their commitment to promote entrepreneurship and provide solutions to the social and economic challenges faced by communities at the bottom of the pyramid.

“At ValueFin, we work with low income entrepreneurs and provide three specific services. These are access to finance, market linkages and business formalization services,” Mukuka Bwalya, a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of ValueFin Limited said.

She added: “From a financial inclusion perspective, we use a web-based loan management system that allows us to gather specific customer data points especially in the informal sector where there is no real record system. The system we have in place allows to leverage AI analytics to make credit decisions about what our customers need but also mitigate risk by following the patterns and behaviors of our customers.”

Mukuka noted that the ValueFin loan management system in flexible and accessible on an entry level smart phone thus making it easy for field agents to capture data required in ‘our day to day credit decision making’.

“We strongly believe that there should be a balance between touch and tech and thus ensure that in every market we work in, we have a physical presence so that from a trust perspective our customers can reach us to assist them whenever there is any challenge.”

She noted that ValueFin onboards 80 per cent women, serves about 500 women every month in 13 market locations and disburses average loans sizes of about 1500 Kwacha per person.

Even with this encouraging growth, Mukuka noted that low digital literacy, and low smart devices penetration are delaying last mile financial inclusion.

“We are looking for opportunities for collaboration because we believe that with collaboration, you can achieve anything. We are also improving our system to create more impact. Beyond that, we have also noticed that our customers have a lot challenges around micro insurance when tragedy befalls them. We are looking for ways of partnering with strategic partners and providing a holistic service that captures services like micro insurance to our customers.”

ValueFin was featured on Day 25 of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative; Zambia and Malawi edition. The roll-out of the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative in Zambia and Malawi followed its success in East Africa. Over the past 5 years, the 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative has featured over 200 FinTech stories from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Rwanda. This initiative has also engaged hundreds of end-users and shared their stories with millions worldwide.

The primary objective of this initiative is to support and showcase innovative FinTech giants and start-ups from across Africa, with a focus on promoting financial inclusion and economic growth, in addition to giving start-ups access to the resources they need to develop new and innovative financial solutions that can benefit underserved populations. Such resources include but are not limited to Level One Project guidelines, Mojaloop Open Source Software and Inclusive Finance systems, etc.