Fintech-digest. African heat, identification methods and cryptocrolics
When we say fintech, somehow we immediately see a clean spacious office, people in expensive clothes, beautiful computers on comfortable desks ... But imagine the wild heat, the desert, the lack of water and electricity. At the same time, FINTECH is the most real one. And a turnover of half a billion dollars a year. This case is described in an interview on the Fintech Futures portal.
In 11 African countries, the micro loan company Letshego operates. In six of them, the company has a license for basic banking services - in particular, to accept deposits. And these are not some prosperous countries, but Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Namibia, Ghana and Rwanda, where they recently built communism, organized military coups, or simply couldn’t end a civil war for decades. The population, as you can guess, is not rich, the infrastructure is poorly developed, but there is a need for financial services. Banks, on the other hand, prefer to serve relatively wealthy citizens (the penetration of banking services in Africa, depending on the country, ranges from 5 to 25%), leaving tens of millions of less successful Africans to Letshego and her colleagues.
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The amounts that the organization issues are not that small, the range from 500 to 60,000 US dollars is voiced. Moreover, loan recipients are not only individuals, but also local businesses that find it difficult to find understanding with banks.
Letshego has no offices, and all work goes through agents. And here begins the hardcore finteh. Suppose that each agent has a tablet and a smartphone with a pre-installed software, we will not be surprised. But the software is written in such a way as to reduce the transmitted data to a minimum. The fact is that in these countries, mobile Internet leaves much to be desired, and GPRS (not EDGE) is still for happiness. Two optimization methods are used: sending data in parts in the process of filling out forms and archiving each of the parts. All information is sent in encrypted form.
Also, each agent receives a mobile solar battery. It serves not only to charge working gadgets, but also for paid (!) Recharging of customers' phones. After all, electricity in homes and, hmm, the offices of customers is not always. It is emphasized that this is a source of additional income for agents (and we can imagine how much they earn on commissions).
When registering in the system, each client leaves fingerprints using a portable scanner connected to the agent’s smartphone. Each transaction ends with a receipt, which also contains the signature of the recipient of funds, previously displayed on the screen of a smartphone or tablet.
Customer data is not stored by the agents, after completing the transaction, arriving at the company's servers. There they are not dead weight. An ongoing analysis of debt service is carried out to improve the scoring system. Obviously, the concept of a “good client” in Africa is somewhat different, and a person without official work and banking history who lives in a hut may, in practice, be very solvent and responsible. Or not to be. That is what algorithms should guess.
Unfortunately, the interview does not talk about debt collection mechanisms. Most likely, there are many nuances that I don’t want to be remembered in public. But still half a billion dollars is an impressive turnover, and if the company has been doing this for 20 years, then profitability is sufficient. No wonder some Fintech start-ups with Russian roots also drop in on the African market.
A few years ago, a wave of startups swept the world, offering a new method of identification - a person was guessed by how he types a password. Then they said that this is a unique thing, not worse than fingerprints - the force of pressing, pauses between characters, speed, etc. But in the end, the startups that promoted it did not take off. No one. The error remained too high to entrust something serious to this method.
At Mobile World Congress, I stumbled upon Aware with a Knomi product that identifies a person just by keystrokes. The main product, by the way, came with him to the exhibition. Yes, and stood at the FIDO booth. No, this is not our FIDO which has passed away in the Bose, but a very serious organization, which includes all the major banks and IT corporations, from Visa to Samsung. FIDO deals with the simplicity and reliability of user identification (details at www.fidoalliance.org ), creating standards like the 3GPP communications consortium.
At the Aware stand there was a grandfather with a kind smile. As it turned out, all his life he has been selling secret technology to state bodies. If he is not deceiving, then personally Polkovniku Putinu, at the time of his work in the FSB, sold the right equipment to Siemens. And obviously not a washing machine. So, said the grandfather, one keystrokes and really do not understand. Unable to achieve 100 percent result. However, in combination with the picture from the camera, even the poorest, the accuracy of identification is necessary. It can be applied in the most critical areas.
You can, of course, ask - what's the point of doing such a constructor, when there is already something else, from fingerprint scanners to dual video modules that shoot in 3D? As we have found out today, the world lives in very different ways. Someone has an iPhone X with 256 gigabytes on board, but someone has no electricity in the hut. 2 billion people on our planet have never been in banks. But financial services are needed even by the very poor, and where services are, there is identification. And if there is a way to provide it with a computer, say, 15 years old, equipped with a no less ancient webcam, this is a very useful technology. And she will find a buyer.
On Wednesday, almost simultaneously received two news. First, in June Google will ban advertising everything related to ICO, cryptocurrency and exchanges where these currencies are exchanged. This is motivated by the fact that in this area the level of fraud is too high, it is impossible to distinguish good from evil, and therefore Google does not want to be substituted. And Xiaomi has released a kind of cryptocurrency substitute, called CryptoBunnies (KryptoKroliki).
Images of fictional animals are stored in the blockchain (it is not clear yet - public or private) and are available for sale once a day in limited quantities. It seems everything is innocent, and it is officially forbidden to make money on animals (Chinese laws are harsh), but there are always options. Tellingly, the first batch of CryptoKrolikov was bought out in just an hour.
So very much in time, Google introduces this ban, and even KryptoMyshes would have reached it.
In 11 African countries, the micro loan company Letshego operates. In six of them, the company has a license for basic banking services - in particular, to accept deposits. And these are not some prosperous countries, but Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Namibia, Ghana and Rwanda, where they recently built communism, organized military coups, or simply couldn’t end a civil war for decades. The population, as you can guess, is not rich, the infrastructure is poorly developed, but there is a need for financial services. Banks, on the other hand, prefer to serve relatively wealthy citizens (the penetration of banking services in Africa, depending on the country, ranges from 5 to 25%), leaving tens of millions of less successful Africans to Letshego and her colleagues.
')
The amounts that the organization issues are not that small, the range from 500 to 60,000 US dollars is voiced. Moreover, loan recipients are not only individuals, but also local businesses that find it difficult to find understanding with banks.
Letshego has no offices, and all work goes through agents. And here begins the hardcore finteh. Suppose that each agent has a tablet and a smartphone with a pre-installed software, we will not be surprised. But the software is written in such a way as to reduce the transmitted data to a minimum. The fact is that in these countries, mobile Internet leaves much to be desired, and GPRS (not EDGE) is still for happiness. Two optimization methods are used: sending data in parts in the process of filling out forms and archiving each of the parts. All information is sent in encrypted form.
Also, each agent receives a mobile solar battery. It serves not only to charge working gadgets, but also for paid (!) Recharging of customers' phones. After all, electricity in homes and, hmm, the offices of customers is not always. It is emphasized that this is a source of additional income for agents (and we can imagine how much they earn on commissions).
When registering in the system, each client leaves fingerprints using a portable scanner connected to the agent’s smartphone. Each transaction ends with a receipt, which also contains the signature of the recipient of funds, previously displayed on the screen of a smartphone or tablet.
Customer data is not stored by the agents, after completing the transaction, arriving at the company's servers. There they are not dead weight. An ongoing analysis of debt service is carried out to improve the scoring system. Obviously, the concept of a “good client” in Africa is somewhat different, and a person without official work and banking history who lives in a hut may, in practice, be very solvent and responsible. Or not to be. That is what algorithms should guess.
Unfortunately, the interview does not talk about debt collection mechanisms. Most likely, there are many nuances that I don’t want to be remembered in public. But still half a billion dollars is an impressive turnover, and if the company has been doing this for 20 years, then profitability is sufficient. No wonder some Fintech start-ups with Russian roots also drop in on the African market.
The stewardess is back in business!
A few years ago, a wave of startups swept the world, offering a new method of identification - a person was guessed by how he types a password. Then they said that this is a unique thing, not worse than fingerprints - the force of pressing, pauses between characters, speed, etc. But in the end, the startups that promoted it did not take off. No one. The error remained too high to entrust something serious to this method.
At Mobile World Congress, I stumbled upon Aware with a Knomi product that identifies a person just by keystrokes. The main product, by the way, came with him to the exhibition. Yes, and stood at the FIDO booth. No, this is not our FIDO which has passed away in the Bose, but a very serious organization, which includes all the major banks and IT corporations, from Visa to Samsung. FIDO deals with the simplicity and reliability of user identification (details at www.fidoalliance.org ), creating standards like the 3GPP communications consortium.
At the Aware stand there was a grandfather with a kind smile. As it turned out, all his life he has been selling secret technology to state bodies. If he is not deceiving, then personally Polkovniku Putinu, at the time of his work in the FSB, sold the right equipment to Siemens. And obviously not a washing machine. So, said the grandfather, one keystrokes and really do not understand. Unable to achieve 100 percent result. However, in combination with the picture from the camera, even the poorest, the accuracy of identification is necessary. It can be applied in the most critical areas.
You can, of course, ask - what's the point of doing such a constructor, when there is already something else, from fingerprint scanners to dual video modules that shoot in 3D? As we have found out today, the world lives in very different ways. Someone has an iPhone X with 256 gigabytes on board, but someone has no electricity in the hut. 2 billion people on our planet have never been in banks. But financial services are needed even by the very poor, and where services are, there is identification. And if there is a way to provide it with a computer, say, 15 years old, equipped with a no less ancient webcam, this is a very useful technology. And she will find a buyer.
And about the crypt
On Wednesday, almost simultaneously received two news. First, in June Google will ban advertising everything related to ICO, cryptocurrency and exchanges where these currencies are exchanged. This is motivated by the fact that in this area the level of fraud is too high, it is impossible to distinguish good from evil, and therefore Google does not want to be substituted. And Xiaomi has released a kind of cryptocurrency substitute, called CryptoBunnies (KryptoKroliki).
Images of fictional animals are stored in the blockchain (it is not clear yet - public or private) and are available for sale once a day in limited quantities. It seems everything is innocent, and it is officially forbidden to make money on animals (Chinese laws are harsh), but there are always options. Tellingly, the first batch of CryptoKrolikov was bought out in just an hour.
So very much in time, Google introduces this ban, and even KryptoMyshes would have reached it.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/351258/
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