SC Ventures partners with Yabx to expand access to Financial Services in Africa

SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm has entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Yabx,  a Netherlands-based Fintech that aims at simplifying financial access for MSMe in emerging markets, to drive financial inclusivity in Africa.

While Africa has over 700 million mobile wallets, and about 450 million bank accounts, access to formal credit remains severely constrained due to poor credit infrastructure and the slowly evolving risk appetite of financial services players, especially traditional banks.

The partnership between SC Ventures and Yabx will leverage the recent rise in digitization in the financial sector post the COVID-19 pandemic to create unique, Africa-specific products that will increase access to credit to the underbanked across Africa.

Using an innovative data-driven scoring and analytics engine that has been built with rich experience from African markets, the collaborative approach between SC Ventures and Yabx will widen inclusion across underserved segments in Africa where it is needed most. Loans will be provided to customers for specific purposes like education and skill development.

These loan products will be initially launched in Uganda and then subsequently expanded to other countries in Africa, according to a statement made available to Techloy.