Yabx Technologies partners with SC Ventures to expand access to financial services in Africa
Yabx, a mass-market digital lending platform, has entered a partnership agreement with SC Ventures to expand access to financial services in Africa. SC Ventures is Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment, and ventures arm.
Yabx has created an ecosystem of payment providers, merchant aggregators, e-commerce players, online retailers, mobile network operators, and financial services providers to acquire and underwrite customers. This enables Yabx to scale exponentially since all products are digitally created, managed, and distributed by Yabx. Yabx is a company, to address a deep-rooted need for responsible consumer finance in Africa.
Africa has over 700 million mobile wallets and about 450 million bank accounts. However, access to formal credit remains severely constrained due to poor credit infrastructure and financial services players’ slowly evolving risk appetite, especially traditional banks.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitization in the financial sector and created a fertile environment for new and disruptive products to be taken to the market. Results of Verdant Capital Inclusive Financial Institutions Survey 2022 show that 87% of Inclusive Financial Institutions make use of technology in their product offering, 76% of which cited an improvement in service delivery and reach since the adoption of technological solutions.
70% increased in the number of product channels / routes-to-market since the apex of the pandemic. This is also consistent with Verdant Capital’s experience that IFIs are gravitating towards greater use of technology in their product life cycle.
The partnership between SC Ventures and Yabx is leveraging on this to create unique, Africa-specific products that will increase access to credit to the underbanked across Africa. SC Ventures and Yabx have taken a collaborative approach to jointly address the challenge. Loans originated by Yabx will be provided to customers for specific purposes like education and skill development using an innovative data-driven scoring and analytics engine that has been built with rich experience from African markets. These loan products will be initially launched in Uganda and then expanded to other African countries.
Rajat Dayal, CEO at Yabx, said, “We have a lot of synergy with SC Ventures in Africa and we are uniquely positioned to create a seamless embedded finance experience. This partnership further bridges the gaps in the current market, driving digital innovations and bringing significant benefits to the underserved population of Africa.”
Verdant Capital is the sole advisor to Yabx Technologies on their equity fundraising efforts. Yabx will be presenting to investors during the Verdant Capital Video Africa virtual conference from 22 – 24 March 2023.
