Jacob Kobzi

Friday in Ecuador

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Friday, July 15th, 2016

IMG_0332After a week of work, the Mifos Innovation team has seen it’s last day in Ecuador.

The team met with the Dinero Electronico team in order to discuss regulations. Dinero Electronico saw eye-to-eye on the prospect of providing nano loans as a financial service. They also directed us to the right people to talk to next.

That was the last meeting for the team’s week in Ecuador. The Mifos Initiative is extremely excited for what the future holds and we are looking forward to making the vision of Financial Inclusion 2.0 a reality.

-Jacob Kobzi, Business Development Intern

Jacob Kobzi

Thursday in Ecuador

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Thursday, July 14th, 2016

The week is almost over but the Mifos Innovation team is still hard at work in Ecuador.

The day started with the Innovation Team meeting with an organization that oversees a network of cooperatives. The biggest takeaway from the meeting is that the organization sees the value that the MifoIMG_0404s Financial Inclusion Cloud can bring to their network of financial institutions.

Then, the team met with the IT director from CONAFIPS, an organization responsible for providing support to cooperatives. They put us in contact with some of their cooperatives so that we can discuss our future with the financial institutions directly.

The team then met with Banco Desarrollo to discuss value-chain financing and nano loans further. The team also talked briefly about the integration of accounting services in the Mifos platform. Although it is going to take a little longer to get specific details out of the way, the team is working through the complexities to make the vision of Financial Inclusion 2.0 a reality.

Luisa, a member of the Innovation Team, will officially be traveling to Pindal, Ecuador to observe the entire value-chain financing production. On Monday, she will be meeting with a cooperative to clarify the best configuration of the core banking system to match their needs. She will also be interviewed at Impacto about the Electronic Money System. Javier had two more interviews today, one on TV and the other on the radio.

Tomorrow will be the last day for the Mifos Innovation Team on this week-long trip to Ecuador and we look forward to telling you all about it.

-Jacob Kobzi, Business Development Intern

Jacob Kobzi

Wednesday in Ecuador

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Wednesday, July 14, 2016

The Mifos Innovation Team has finished their 3rd day of work in their trip to Ecuador. Javier started Wednesday off strong with yet another interview on TV. He discussed the benefits that Electronic Money can have on Financial Inclusion. He also discussed the integration of mobile money within the Mifos Platform.

The team then joined with one of our technology partners and met with the leading social-m2016-07-14-PHOTO-00000062ission bank in Ecuador. The team met for two hours discussing the Mifos operational model and giving demos of how the system will function. The leadership within the bank is eager to move forward with the Mifos Financial Inclusion Cloud!

Before the day was over, the team joined the audience of about 200 youth to listen to one of our team members, Luisa, give a talk. Luisa was talking on behalf of an organization called Global Shapers, and sharing her story to inspire others to create opportunities for themselves. Luisa’s talk was very inspiring, and a fantastic way to end the third day of the trip!

-Jacob Kobzi, Business Development Intern

Jacob Kobzi

Tuesday in Ecuador

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Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

The Mifos innovation team saw no lack of action on their second day in Ecuador. After a busy first day, they got right back to work with multiple meetings and interviews scheduled for day 2.
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Javier started the day off presenting to SEPS, a regulator for cooperatives. The members of SEPS were very intrigued by our operational model. Then it was on to the next meeting with Banco Desarrollo to discuss some specifics on how our model is going to tie in perfectly with their financial organizations and cooperatives in place. In particular, our team discussed how nano loans and value-chain financing was going to work with our platform.

Javier had to leave the meeting with Banco Desarrollo early, since he had scheduled interviews he had to attend. He had two interviews on live television and another on the radio with FM Mundo 98.1. You can see Javier in the photo to the right in the middle of his interview!

Soon enough, it was time f20160712_195945or the Mifos Innovation Team to regather and meet with the Ministry of Economic Policy. They met with two high government officials who in turn put us in contact with dozens of other valuable individuals. After talking with them briefly about mobile wallets, the team was off to meet with Level 3, a worldwide provider of data centers. Our team was astounded by the coverage of the data centers and is happy to partner with them to launch the Mifos Financial Inclusion Cloud in Ecuador.

The end of the day came after another brief meeting with IOU Fintech. The team has found that the excitement in Ecuador is contagious. Everyone is on board and ready to announce Financial Inclusion 2.0 in Ecuador. We’ll keep you updated on all that happens in the coming days!

-Jacob Kobzi, Business Development Intern

Jacob Kobzi

Monday in Ecuador

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Monday, 11 July 2016

The Mifos Innovation team of  Ed Cable, Javier Borkenztain, and Luisa Martínez,  landed in Ecuador today for an exciting week of work. Right off the bat, the team had their schedule booked. To start the day, they met with Carlos Córdova from IOU Fintech to be introduced to his team as  well as briefed for tomorrow’s mCnG1fDOW8AAk_fveeting. Carlos can be seen in the picture to the right presenting his plan for emoney in Ecuador.

After a short break, the team then had two meetings with the Central Bank of Ecuador, one with their technical team and the other with their public relations team.

Finally, the innovation team regrouped at Impacto, the social impact hub for Ecuador. Impacto has doubled in size since the last time the Mifos team visited Ecuador!

Long story short, the process of bringing Financial Inclusion 2.0 to Ecuador has began, yet there is so much more to come. In the following days, Javier, a member of our innovation team, has 8 interviews scheduled about the Mifos Financial Inclusion Cloud. He has 2 on TV, 1 on the radio, and one with the newspaper just tomorrow. There is still much more to be done and we look forward to filling you in with what happens each day of our trip.

-Jacob Kobzi, Business Development Intern

Edward Cable

Summiting the Silicon Mountain in Cameroon

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ayukThis a guest post from Ayuk Etta Akum, the CEO and Founder of Skylabase which is an IT Company in Cameroon, Africa that provides technologies for financial inclusion.

A year ago, I discovered financial inclusion, the movement to end poverty in the world. Then I decided to build my company on this movement. The beauty of financial inclusion is the ability to make a very large change in the world in a very critical sector with the least technology possible. For us to embark on this journey we needed years of experience from experts and key players in this movement and we discovered this in the Mifos Initiative, a key player in the world today for the financial inclusion movement. They opened to us a door of experience to meet people with over 50 years experience in the credit union movement, finance experts, banking experts, and a complete banking engine to start from.

The hard part was for us to be open and join the movement by seriously engaging in the community, and from this came Smartfinance which is a centralized and extendable banking platform for credit unions, microfinance institutions, and banks. Our goal and vision of smartfinance is for it to be the microfinance platform for Cameroon and CEMAC region of Africa and ultimately move across Africa. Our partnership with the Mifos Initiative helped us to come out with a platform that will be the future of finance management in Cameroon and the CEMAC region in Africa. We are integrating into this platform mobile money, money transfer, USSD connectors, all the features to make Smartfinance a full-fledged banking platform while giving back to the Mifos Initiative community. Read more

Jacob Kobzi

Mifos in Ecuador

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Hello Mifos Community,

There are still 2.5 billion people worldwide that do not have access to basic financial services. Financial inclusion is working to bring this number down. However, financial inclusion only works when available. It is costly to implement and difficult to access for many developing countries. This is why the Mifos Initiative has been working to develop Financial Inclusion 2.0, an innovative approach to allow every person access to financial services using just their phone.Mifos in front of Central Bank of Ecuador

Mobile Money in Ecuador

In 2013, Ecuador reported that there were more mobile phone lines than citizens in their country. Yet, 60% of the Ecuadorian population does not have access to financial services, and that number only gets higher in rural areas. Realizing this, the Ecuadorian government saw an opportunity where a mobile electronic payment system could be the answer to their financial inclusion problems. Ecuador implemented the first-ever state-run mobile electronic payment system that is low cost and easy to access for everyone that has a mobile phone. Read more