SC Ventures and Yabx to expand access to financial services in Africa

By Leandra Monteiro

SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s FinTech investment and ventures arm has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Yabx, a company incubated by Comviva and part of the Mahindra Group, 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 but 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 COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digitisation in the financial sector. The partnership between SC Ventures and Yabx is leveraging on this to create Africa-specific products that will increase access to credit for the underbanked across Africa.

Rajat Dayal, CEO at Yabx, said, “We have a lot of synergy with SC Ventures in Africa and together 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.”

Given the scale and the complexity of the opportunity, SC Ventures and Yabx have taken a collaborative approach to jointly address the challenge. Loans 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 subsequently expanded to other countries in Africa.

Jiten Arora, Member, SC Ventures said, “We are excited at the prospect of using a data-driven, technology-enabled partnership model to serve the underbanked through purpose-driven loans in Africa, a continent for which we have a deep understanding and a strong commitment towards.”