Showing 78 results for:
fintech
Popular topics
All results
The City of Baltimore has filed a lawsuit on behalf of its residents impacted by an alleged “lending scheme.” What Lawsuit Entails According to a press release, Mayor Brandon M. Scott and the City Council of Baltimore, represented by the Baltimore City Department of Law and Berger Montague, filed a lawsuit against MoneyLion Technologies Inc. The lawsuit claims the fintech company, which reaches nearly 14 million customers, participated in “a digital-age payday lending scheme” and violated the city’s consumer protection ordinance. It states that the company trapped “some of the City’s most financially precarious residents in an exploitative cycle of debt” by misleading them into taking out Instacash Advances, which were marketed as “zero-interest” loans. However, customers who accept the loans also agree to pay fees and “tips” that exceed the state’s APR limit by more than tenfold. The press release notes that the maximum interest rate is 33% and cites the company’s misleading...
Paga Group, a UK-based African fintech company, has expanded its services to the United States. Founded by Tayo Oviosu in 2009, the company is on a mission to eliminate the pain points of sending and accessing money for Africa’s diaspora. Paga Group has folded three businesses into its structure, including Paga, its consumer digital wallet, which permits users to send money, make payments, and bank in multiple currencies, according to the company’s website. Paga also offers a virtual or physical debit card that can be used at businesses that accept Visa. Additional perks include setting bills on autopay. Paga’s other businesses include Paga Engine — a B2B business serving more than 260 companies — and Doroki — a retail and SME management platform — according to information shared with AFROTECH™. Expanding To U.S. Soil According to information shared with AFROTECH™, in 2024 alone, Paga processed 124 million transactions, valued at nearly $5.6 billion. Paga is now expanding to U.S....
The Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA), managed by Sahel Capital, has secured a $10 million investment from the Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund, according to a LinkedIn post. The fund is managed by MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) in Mauritius. A press release further notes that the investment will allow SEFAA to expand support for small and medium-sized agribusinesses (agri-SMEs), creating 10,000 jobs across 13 sub-Saharan African countries. These businesses, often excluded from traditional financing, play a critical role in empowering smallholder farmers and generating income opportunities for women and youth. “Since the inception of the fund in 2021, we have processed 33 facilities to 18 companies in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Mezuo Nwuneli, managing partner of Sahel Capital, in the release. “This $10 million commitment from the Mastercard Foundation Africa Growth Fund, through MEDA Mauritius, is a testament to our...
The impact of generative AI on the U.S. labor market is already visible in employment data, with signs of a hiring slowdown in the tech sector — especially among younger workers. On the Aug. 5, 2025, episode of the “Goldman Sachs Exchanges” podcast, Joseph Briggs, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs , noted that most companies have yet to implement AI in production cases, so its broader effect on the job market remains limited, according to CNBC. Still, current trends offer a sneak peek at what’s to come. “If you look at the tech sector’s employment trends, they’ve been basically growing as a share of overall employment in a remarkably linear manner for the last 20 years,” Briggs said, per CNBC. “Over the last three years, we’ve actually seen a pullback in tech hiring that has led it to undershoot its trend.” As highlighted in “Quantifying the Risks of AI-Related Job Displacement,” a recent report co-authored by Briggs, unemployment among tech workers aged 20 to 30 has risen by...
Founder Mitchell Jones announced on Aug. 6, 2025, that his startup, Lava Payments — a digital wallet that enables merchants to use usage credits for transactions in an AI-driven web — has raised $5.8 million in a seed funding round led by Lerer Hippeau. According to TechCrunch, Lava aims to simplify payment processes and developer workflows by building a solution for the modern web, where AI agents increasingly handle transactions on behalf of users. The funding will go toward hiring, product development, and go-to-market strategies. “We see the world as very interconnected,” Jones told TechCrunch, explaining how his product differs from its competitors. “What we’re really focused on is building [for the] agent-native economy.” Jones launched Lava after departing from his Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, Lendtable, and diving into AI development. While building a basic form-filling agent, he spent over $400 and repeatedly ran into the same issues — starting new subscriptions,...
When the world shut down in 2020, Alexander Zanders made a decision some may not have dared — selling his crypto holdings to buy 100 acres of farmland in Nigeria, betting on soil over tech or urban assets. “I always tell people I did what any rational person would do when the world feels like it’s ending,” he told AFROTECH™ in an interview. “I started farming.” That move wasn’t just a pandemic pivot. It marked the beginning of UfarmX, a fintech company that, according to Zanders, helps smallholder farmers across Africa access credit, high-quality inputs, and the opportunity to scale what they’ve always done — grow food. A Mission Rooted In Experience A Baltimore native and Temple University alum, Zanders didn’t come from a farming background. His path — from exporting iPads to building agri-fintech infrastructure in West Africa — shows how innovation can grow from direct, on-the-ground experience. Before launching UfarmX, Zanders was already an entrepreneur. As an undergrad, he...
Amen Rahh, widely known as “Principal Rahh,” is a nationally recognized educator and best-selling author from Compton, CA, who first gained attention after leading a South Los Angeles high school to a 100% graduation rate. However, his mission took an unexpected turn. One of his students, Keon — an unhoused teen in foster care — had been accepted to Tuskegee University but couldn’t afford the final $480 he needed to attend. “He thought, ‘If I can get this $400, I can get out,'” Rahh told AFROTECH™. “Tragically, he lost his life before he could.” Rahh learned the news while working on his doctorate at UCLA and says the loss changed everything. “At [age] 34, I left my job and started a tech company to transform education,” Rahh said. The company — Knowlej — is using fintech innovation to reimagine what’s possible for underserved students nationwide. The Classroom To Real Life Since its 2023 launch, the fintech app Knowlej has reached more than 30,000 students, according to Rahh. He...
Goldman Sachs is turning to AI to level up its developer workforce — and its latest team member isn’t even human. The global investment bank is testing an AI-powered software engineer from startup Cognition that can handle everything from writing code to fixing bugs and building full applications, with minimal human support, CNBC reports. Chief Information Officer Marco Argenti said the bank sees this as the beginning of a new kind of collaboration between people and machines. “We’re going to start augmenting our workforce with… our new employee who’s going to start doing stuff on behalf of our developers,” Argenti told CNBC. Goldman Sachs is the first major bank to use the tool and believes this tech has the potential to significantly boost productivity across its 12,000-person developer team. And if it proves successful, the firm may roll out thousands of AI engineers across the organization. What Makes The Goldman Sachs AI Engineer Different This isn’t your average AI assistant...
Tech investor Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, warned that universities will “pay the price” for promoting diversity and allegedly discriminating against supporters of President Donald Trump , according to screenshots of chat messages reviewed by The Washington Post. During a May 3, 2025, WhatsApp chat with White House officials and tech leaders, Andreessen reportedly criticized DEI and immigration policies after being invited by moderator Sriram Krishnan, a White House senior policy adviser on AI, to counter a comment about their impact on economic growth . The outlet also noted that Krishnan had created the group chat at the time he was working at Andreessen’s firm. The group chat, formed in 2023 before Trump’s current term, connects investors and experts with diverse political views interested in open AI development. In addition to Andreessen and Krishnan, members include White House AI adviser Dean Ball, Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann...
A woman-owned trading finance platform is now positioned to scale its footprint in Africa. Liquify Established in 2023 by Nadya Yaremenko and Alberta Asafo-Asamoah, the Ghanaian company is the “f irst fully digital trade finance platform on the continent,” its website mentions. It exists to connect small and medium-sized enterprises in Africa with capital markets across the globe. The Condia reports that the platform allows exporters to turn unpaid invoices into cash in the same day while investors can tap into a high-yielding asset class with the added perks of short maturities and low market correlation. What’s more, Liquify has integrated AI into its due diligence process to create more competitive rates for exporters selling to investment-grade buyers along with lower operational costs. “We built Liquify to unlock the $120 billion trade-finance gap holding back Africa’s most dynamic SMEs,” Yaremenko (CEO) said, according to The Condia. $1.5M Raise Liquify has already financed $4...
What do sports and fintech have in common? For Kyle Rowley, it’s all about endurance, focus, and flawless execution. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the former basketball player once played for Northwestern University and St. Mary’s Gaels before going professional with Spain and Sweden. Now retired, Rowley is the founder of Ankor, a Sweden-based startup that, according to his recent post on LinkedIn, raised $1.3 million to solve one of e-commerce’s biggest pain points: manual reconciliation. In the post, Rowley reflected on the journey. “Today, I’m incredibly proud to say we’re launching something we built for an ecosystem I’ve genuinely come to love,” he shared. “For the past year, our team has been heads-down, rebuilding our entire platform, Ankor, from scratch.” What Is Ankor? Ankor automates the manual, time-consuming process of financial reconciliation by handling tasks such as matching purchase orders to invoices, flagging payment discrepancies, and syncing data across...
One of Africa’s most prominent tech founders is stepping back into the spotlight with a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture. Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, his co-founder of Tunisian fintech startup Expensya, have launched Thunder Code, a generative AI-powered software testing platform. TechCrunch reports that the France- and Tunisia-based startup has already raised $9 million in seed funding. The return to startup life comes nearly two years after the duo sold Expensya to Swedish software firm Medius in 2023, according to the outlet. Although the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that they estimated it to be more than $120 million, marking one of the biggest African tech exits to date. From Promising Exit To New Beginnings Following the acquisition, Jouini assumed the role of chief product and technology officer at Medius. Neither he nor Othmani intended to return to entrepreneurship. However, Jouini’s exposure to the...
Carrot Credit, a Nigerian fintech company, recently announced via LinkedIn that it has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to expand its lending platform, which enables users to borrow against digital investment assets. The funding round was led by MaC Venture Capital, a firm that’s known for investing in diverse founders, as AFROTECH™ previously reported, with additional participation from Partech Africa and Authentic Ventures. When making the announcement, Carrot Credit stated that the funding will be used to support the company’s efforts to grow its team, enhance its credit infrastructure, and strengthen integration with digital investment platforms across Africa. Borrowing Without Selling: A New Credit Framework According to its website, Carrot Credit offers a unique approach to lending by allowing individuals to use their financial assets, such as stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), government bonds, or cryptocurrencies, as collateral. Users can access up to 40% of the value...
Klarna’s plans to go public may need to be on standby. The Sweden-based fintech company has reportedly had a loss of $99 million in Q1 2025, according to Tip Ranks. In comparison, it saw a loss of $47 million in Q1 2024. There are several reasons for this decline. For one, customer credit losses increased by 17%, totaling $136 million, according to its Q1 report. However a spokesperson told The Tab this statistic was to be expected. “Bear in mind that we made 13% more loans than a year ago so, all else being equal, you’d expect credit losses to increase by at least 13%,” the spokesperson mentioned. Klarna And Artificial Intelligence While Klarna replaced human roles with artificial intelligence (AI), as AFROTECH™ previously reported, this decision was driven by a desire to increase operational efficiency and reduce overhead. As a result, 700 customer service representatives were replaced with tools that leveraged OpenAI. Tip Ranks notes that this move did help the company meet its...
UX designer Roderick Wilkins strives to make the tech industry more inclusive. Tech Journey The Quincy, FL, native has always had a deep interest in technology and began fixing computers at a young age, which guided his educational pursuits at Florida A&M University (FAMU). He earned a bachelor’s degree in information technology in 2019 and went on to Louisiana State University, where he earned a master’s in digital media art and engineering with a focus on UX in 2021. “When you open that app and you see the first screen, you’re scrolling and you’re interacting with it, I always say someone had to design that,” Wilkins told AFROTECH™. “So I would say, within UX, there are designers, which is what I am, and someone designed that whole page that you’re seeing and you’re interacting with.” While UX includes various verticals one can explore — such as research and accessibility — Wilkins’ interest in graphic design aligned with his goal of becoming a UX designer, which was affirmed...
