Emerging markets are projected to become some of the world’s largest economies in the coming decades.
Today, billions of people in developing countries are online and expect on-demand access to everything. Sound familiar?
Fintech startups are building the digital financial infrastructure required to give unbanked and underbanked people, as well as businesses access to financial services. And this economic empowerment is already leading to new tech developments and business opportunities across all industries.
Our sector-focused investment teams are partnering with startups on the ground in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and South & Southeast Asia — sharing their knowledge, global networks, and proven business model expertise with founders who are building the economic futures of their countries.
Open is a business banking service that combines everything from banking to invoicing & automated bookkeeping in one place.
https://open.money/Open is a business banking platform that combines everything from invoicing to banking, payroll and automated accounting in one place. It also offers the best of the classic banking services like (internet banking, cheque books, Debit card) along with these additional features.
Africa's 1st mobility Fintech providing revenue-based vehicle financing.
https://moove.africa/Moove embeds its alternative credit-scoring technology into ride-hailing and e-logistics platforms, which allows access to the proprietary performance and revenue analytics of mobility entrepreneurs to underwrite loans. Moove’s model is to provide loans to its customers by selling them new vehicles and financing up to 95 percent of the purchase within five days of signup. This data then empowers Moove to offer a wide range of other relevant financial products to their users.
FairMoney is an online Microbank in emerging markets and a credit methodology based on smartphone data.
https://fairmoney.io/FairMoney leverages big data to give access to credit to 2 billion people in emerging markets across the world. Consumers and businesses in these markets often suffer from missing access to credit. FairMoney uses advanced machine learning applied to smartphone data to build credit scores and distribute credit through any mobile application.
Two-sided agricultural marketplace with embedded financial services.
https://agro.club/Agro.Club is the commercial effectiveness platform that connects input suppliers and grain buyers with farmers using the latest digital commerce and fintech solutions. Platform is currently used by leading global seed, crop protection, animal nutrition and grain companies, and more than 19,000 farmers across Europe and North America.
Precium (formerly Revio) is the first African payments platform purpose-built for enterprise. Industry leaders choose Precium to optimise payment performance, automate financial operations, and craft extraordinary customer experiences.
https://www.precium.com/Precium (formerly Revio) is the first African payments platform purpose-built for enterprise. Industry leaders choose Precium to optimise payment performance, automate financial operations, and craft extraordinary customer experiences.
Founded in 2020 by Ruaan Botha and Nicole Dunn, Precium aims to combat the impact of payment fragmentation and failure on consumer commerce in African markets. Its unified payments platform offers merchants access to locally-optimised payment methods, with built-in redundancy and routing rules to increase payment success rates. Beyond payment acceptance, Precium offers a suite of configurable payment operations and recovery solutions – such as automated reconciliation, monitoring, and alerting – to help enterprise merchants reduce payment complexity.
The growing list of Precium customers includes South Africa’s largest retailers and financial institutions, and some of the world’s largest consumer brands. The company partners with its clients to deliver payment solutions that enable quantifiable business value with the scalability, reliability, and flexibility required for high-volume processing.
Ozé enables micro-SMEs to keep track of their records, receivables and payables, issue invoices and receipts, process payments, and even get access to credit.
https://getoze.com/Despite merchants and micro-SMEs forming the pillars on which West African economies stand, these businesses have been overwhelmingly ignored and neglected by mobile-based financial service providers. Ozé helps capture, analyze and improve the performance of business owners in Ghana and Nigeria with the ambition to become a pan-African player.
Through their digital accounting system, which enables users to keep track of their records, AR and AP and get access to credit, Ozé users are able to operate like large businesses and, therefore, empowers micro-SMEs to grow and scale far beyond their current reach. Having partnered with the region’s biggest banks, SME banks and local fintechs, Ozé is able to provide its users with products from traditional financial institutions but with the seamless interface and usability of a social media platform.
Yolda.com is a “Digital Logistics Operator” that aims to improve logistics operation processes and lead digitalization efforts in the sector with in-house developed technologies and solutions.
https://www.yolda.com/Turkey-based freight tech startup Yolda.com started it’s journey in 2020 with the aim of being the leading freight Tech startup in Europe. We manage the entire logistics operation end-to-end for our B2B business partners. Yolda.com matches freight shipments with available independent carriers to provide fast, cost-effective transport for businesses of all sizes and our model supports individual carriers by opening up new business opportunities for them through our platform.
We specialize in ‘less than truckload’ (LTL) shipments, harnessing sharing economy dynamics. Through consolidating loads from multiple shippers and making the most of each truck’s capacity, we help our business partners in reducing logistics costs and carbon footprint of the end-to-end freight journey.
Jumba is a B2B construction materials marketplace simplifying the construction materials supply chain in Africa.
https://www.thejumba.com/Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, Jumba is a construction technology company that is simplifying construction in Africa. Through its B2B marketplace, Jumba connects hardware stores and construction sites to manufacturers of construction materials.
Launched in April 2022, Jumba serves customers in 60% of Kenya’s regions. The company is layering financial services through its bank partners to provide buy now pay later options for its customers.
Maqsad is building a personalized learning platform to make high-quality education accessible to 100 million Pakistani students.
https://maqsad.io/Maqsad is a mobile-first edtech platform that delivers high-quality personalized academic content for 100 million Pakistani students. The platform provides a holistic learning experience where users can learn a concept, test their knowledge, and ask questions. The edtech has developed the MENAP region's first instant query-solving engine, which matches student queries to video solutions within seconds.
In just the last 6 months, Maqsad has reached over 1 million students and answered 4 million plus student queries. The platform is building AI-enabled tools to increase personalization, adaptive learning, and build a data-driven ecosystem to improve learning outcomes.
Julaya is a digital account that enables companies to perform all their financial transactions in one single interface.
https://julaya.coJulaya is a B2B digital account that enables companies to send and collect payments seamlessly through a digital account. With the Julaya platform, SME’s, large corporates and government institutions can make bulk payments through all mobile money channels, process their travel or online expenses with a corporate prepaid card, easily import all transactions into their accounting system, and digitize cash collection.
Simply a better HR experience.
https://palmhr.netSupporting entrepreneurs’ growth in Latin America with a flexible, fast and friendly financial product.
https://getfairplay.com/Fairplay is a revenue-based financing enabler for the new digital economy in Latin America with the mission to empower entrepreneurs’ growth with a fast, flexible and friendly product by investing in their working capital cycles directly through their three main needs: performance marketing campaigns, logistics costs and inventories.
For fast-growing e-commerce businesses, Fairplay offers growth capital funding in exchange for a steady revenue share of their earnings until capital is paid back plus a flat fee.
We're building your bank, free from hidden banking fees.
https://www.onitbank.com/OnIt, a licensed bank in Kenya, offers a free transaction network linking consumers, businesses, and suppliers, enhanced with services like check-out finance, premium financial products, and open APIs for easy consumer integration.
Corporate cards and all-in-one spend management for SMEs in MENAP
https://www.pemo.io/Pemo is a UAE-based startup on a mission to empower small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan (MENAP) region by offering an all-in-one spend management platform that includes prepaid corporate cards, invoice payment systems and expense tracking functions.
The company aims to remove friction in day-to-day spending processes, allowing businesses to entrust their teams to make quicker and more responsible purchasing decisions. In addition to accounting automation, virtual and physical cards with built-in rules and the consolidation of inbound invoices, Pemo’s software offers an integrated dashboard with full visibility over company spending and real-time tracking and reporting options.
ShopUp is Bangladesh's leading full-stack B2B marketplace for SMEs.
https://shopup.com.bd/At its core, ShopUp enables offline and online neighborhood mom-and-pop shops to sell through digital, social and retail channels. They do so, however, in such a way that they are deeply integrated at every section of the value chain. ShopUp's onlne platform allows merchants to upload their products, connect to both retailers and consumers, easily and cost-efficiently sell their products, as well as get access to cheap and sustainable credit. ShopUp's platform provides a full ecosystem for Bangladeshi store-owners and entrepreneurs.
Morgana takes a customer-centric approach to processing mortgage applications.
https://morgana.mx/Morgana takes a customer-centric approach to processing mortgage applications in Mexico, from compiling data at the client and property level to aggregating data on mortgages. Morgana holds the fastest mortgage process in the market, from application to signature with notaries in 9 days. By acquiring clients directly or working in partnership with several builders and realtors, Morgana is reshaping the mortgage industry.
Flow48 offers revenue-based financing to online and offline businesses.
https://flow48.comFlow48 offers revenue-based financing to online and offline businesses. By embedding in the customer’s payment gateway, they can offer businesses upfront lump-sum investment capital to invest in inventory or CAPEX and generate future revenues.
Bnext is a Neobank with an integrated marketplace in which clients can purchase financial and insurance services without having to leave the app.
https://bnext.es/Bnext has been able to outperform existing Neobanks in Spain (one of the toughest markets – 2nd most banked market in the world), due to a better market dynamics understanding and the fact that they were able to offer a complete banking experience from day one. Bnext has +120k active clients in Spain.
And that is exactly Bnext’s USP! Due to the fact that they “outsource” banking functionalities (lending, investing, transfers, insurance etc.) to other financial institutions, they offer a full banking experience from day one.
Abhi is Pakistan's first financial wellness platform focused on democratizing credit for both individuals and businesses.
https://abhi.com.pk/Abhi is reshaping how credit is accessed in emerging markets. There are millions of individuals who have never been able to access any credit or financial services in Pakistan. With a focus on sustainability, affordability and transparency, Abhi's flagship product Earned Wage Access (EWA) is helping the underserved access their earned salaries on demand. The ethos of Abhi is to help customers in building good financial practices and supporting them throughout their financial journey.
Khazna is a financial benefits platform for employees, labor, and contractors.
https://khazna.appKhazna is a financial benefits platform that provides employees, labor, and contractors access to financial services. Starting with a lending and salary on demand offering, Khazna wants to become the go-to solution for any Egyptian when it comes to banking and lending solutions.
Elephant is a health platform based on blockchain and targeted at refugee camps and governments.
https://www.elephant.healthcare/Elephant is a tech startup tackling big problems in global healthcare. They create lightweight, connectable applications that improve access to care and save lives. Elephant works in emerging economies and has partnered with NGOs, governments, and with healthcare professionals around the world with a view to building the future of digital health and personalized, preventative care.
Lizza is building the operating system for social commerce businesses.
https://lizza.link/Lizza is building the operating system for social commerce businesses. Through its suite of products and services, including payments, shipping, marketing, and messaging, Lizza enables businesses to sell to their audience directly on social platforms like Instagram.
Koin is a Fintech startup giving customers instant credit and installment payment options for online purchases.
https://www.koin.com.br/Koin (acquired by Despegar in 2020) is the only provider of after-delivery payment solutions in Latin America. The company offers safe and easy-to-use payment solutions to e-commerce shops that let buyers make purchases online and pay later. Koin offers online credit and instalment payment options to users with no need to fill out a registration or provide financial information. Their service helps e-commerce attract new buyer groups that previously have not been able to make payments online.
Iyzico is the first full-service payment gateway focusing on the Turkish market offering vendors a fast and easy way to receive payments online.
http://www.iyzico.com/Iyzico (acquired by PayU in 2019) is Turkey’s leading ePayment company offering businesses easy solutions to accept payments online. The platform is tailored to the needs of the local market and integrates with over 22 different payment options and banks. Customers appreciate the easy setup process and features such as recurring payments and Iyzico’s marketplace solution.
Learn the strategic decisions and pivotal moments that have propelled Moove from a startup in Nigeria to an international mobility player with a $100M investment from Uber and Mubadala.
Speedinvest's Irene Gentili and Philip Specht share their emerging markets thesis and why they believe that empowering the flow of capital towards network effects-focused businesses in those regions can deliver outstanding returns.
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