For Uganda to achieve last mile financial inclusion, there must be special focus on the unserved and underserved. This means that there must be equitable distribution and access to financial services.
Several innovators have developed and rolled out solutions aimed at democratizing savings and borrowing. But more efforts are needed if financial inclusion is to be achieved.
Among the platforms that are enabling people at the bottom of the pyramid to be able to save and access digital credit services is PesaSave.
According to Steven Emalu, the Co-Founder and Team Lead at PesaSave, they started PesaSave to address the challenges faced by those unable to be served by formal financial systems. He noted that around 2022, together with his colleagues, they tried to access credit from a bank, only to be locked out by the much paperwork, business data and lack of collateral accepted by the bank. This inspired them to start a platform that would offer an alternative to the unbanked, unserved and underserved.
“At PesaSave, we build financial technology solutions for the underserved and unbanked populations with a large focus on the Youth. We do this through the PesaSave Application that allows individuals mainly the Youth to create specific targets towards their financial needs and they periodically save towards achieving these goals. The Application is easy to access and use thus its users don’t need to travel to deposit their savings and the platform is transparent thus allowing them to track their savings,” Steven Emalu said.
He added: “We also work with groups of individuals mainly in informal sectors. These join as a group and start saving. Through these savings, they are able to meet their goals and also access credit. We are trying to create an alternative to credit as these unbanked and underserved groups are not able to access credit from formal financial institutions.”
Emalu highlighted that individual saving is open to any adult interested in saving money towards meeting a specific financial goal while group savings are for individuals that come together and agree to save as a group, agree on the saving period and the purpose of the savings.
“Both individuals and groups are able to access affordable credit against their savings. We ensure that when a group saves, individual members are able to access part of these savings as credit at an interest and terms determined by each group. Well as the credit has no collateral, those borrowing must have guarantors. So far, we are serving about 28 groups and over 600 individuals.”
He noted that to execute this work, PesaSave has partnered with licensed operators such as PayTota to support their payments and collections. He revealed that before the end of the year, they will also have a commercial bank partner and thus serve their customers better.
PesaSave has featured on Day 28 of the annual 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative Season 5.
Run under HiPipo’s Include Everyone program that also encompasses other initiatives such as FinTech Landscape Exhibition, Women in FinTech Hackathon, Summit & Incubator, and the Digital and Financial Inclusion Summit and Digital Impact Awards Africa; the #40Days40FinTechs platform aptly provides a setting for the various players and stakeholders involved in digital and financial technology to exhibit their products and services. It also gives players a platform to share their ideas on how the unserved and underserved by the present financial systems can be brought into the fold.
With over 150 participants in the last four years, #40Days40FinTechs continues to be the world’s premier showcase event for innovations that are enabling underserved populations to join the digital economy space. We know that this can only get better owing to the inspiration and collaboration of our partners; Level One Project, Mojaloop Foundation, INFITX, Cyberplc Academy, Ideation Corner, and Crosslake Technologies. Most importantly, the initiative owes its continued success to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.