JUMO, an emerging market technology startup that offers unbanked or under-banked people access to financial services via their mobile phones has received a US$ 3 million investment from Proparco, a subsidiary of Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
JUMO helps to provide loans and savings-products to customers through mobile phone networks. The company has developed a credit scoring algorithm which helps customers to unlock the value of their digital footprints by providing an accurate estimation of their creditworthiness, helping them to access finance at a very low cost due to the company’s efficient, large scale platform approach.
Andrew Watkins-Ball, Founder and CEO of JUMO said, “We have proven our business model and are now gearing up for the next phase of building the largest scale and lowest cost platform delivering high-quality financial services to emerging markets. With Proparco we have an investor who understands the complexity of our markets and is committed to the qualitative imperatives of our mission such as customer protection and transparency, so we are very excited about this partnership.”
The startup that currently, operates in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, and Ghana and Pakistan has already granted over 12.2 Mn loans.
“This investment in JUMO – our first investment in a Fintech – is a natural extension of our action to promote financial inclusion by focusing on microfinance organisations, loans for SMEs – and now mobile technology. This project harnesses mobile phone technology to reach much larger numbers of people in a much wider area, ” as told by Grégory Clemente, Chief Executive Officer of Proparco.
JUMO was in 2017 the first South African startup to be selected by Google for its Launchpad accelerator.
