By Andrei Skvarsky.
Mexico has become the second country after the Philippines where U.S. financial technology company Venio launched a smartphone app for microlending to people without bank accounts.
The unbanked account for 63 per cent of Mexico’s adult population of 98m.
The app offers them access to loans that may be as tiny as 25 pesos ($1.20), according to a statement from Venio. But this sum can cover the cost of a meal or basic medicine or a round trip to work.
Venio app-provided loans are repayable through retail shops, public transport facilities and institutions.
The roll-out of the app in the Philippines in summer 2020 was an “oversubscribed and successful debut”, Venio said in its statement.
According to the World Bank’s Global Findex database, in 2017 the world’s population of 7.6bn included 1.7bn unbanked adults.
Venio is a global “nano credit” company. The firm, which mainly uses smartphone technology, is headquartered in New York and has operations in Britain, the Philippines, Singapore, India and Colombia.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.